LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



PHILLIPS BROOKS IN BOSTON 



Five Years' Editorial Estimates 



J 
M. C.'AYRES 

Editor of the Boston ''''Daily Advertiser" 



M!\\\ an |ntrobrtction 
By Rev. W. J. TUCKER, D.D. 

Professor of Sacred Rhetoric and the Pastoral Charge in Andover 
Theological Seminary, and President-elect of 
Dartmouth College 






Boston 
George H. Ellis, 141 Franklin Street 

1S93 






c(? 



^\^ 



lot co«o»* M ] 



COPYRIGHT, 
GEORGE H. ELLIS, 



1893. 



OBO. H. ELLIS, PRINT&R, 141 FRANKLIN 6T., BOSTON. 



To Newspaper Men and Women 

I Bcfctcate 

This Memorial of one who was our Friend, as we 
were his. 

M. C. A. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

Preface, 5 

Introduction, 11 

A More Excellent Way, 17 

Dr. Brooks' Lenten Lectures, 22 

Sentiment and Sentimentality, .... 27 

Preaching without Notes, 30 

Phillips Brooks' Power, 32 

Watch-night Meeting, 36 

The Doctrine of the Episcopacy, ... 40 

Phillips Brooks and Lyman Abbott, . . 41 

Episcopal Schism Predicted, 43 

The Vacant Bishopric, 47 

A Non-partisan Bishop, 51 

"A Non-partisan Bishop," 55 

Bishop Perry's Letter, 57 

Bishops' Vote Next, 61 

It will be Bishop Brooks, 6s 

"Bishop of Massachusetts," 68 



4 CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Phillips Brooks' Sermon, 72 

; Bishop Brooks' Consecration, j6 

Helen Keller's Thought of God, ... 82 

Christ in Boston, 84 

Reaching the Masses, 86 

The Great Grief, 88 

A Teacher of Theology, 95 

The Last of Earth, 100 

The Bishop of Boston, 108 

Phillips Brooks at Harvard, no 



Appendix, . 113 



PREFACE. 



In the Prayer-Book there is a form of supplication 
"for all sorts and conditions of men." The editor of a 
daily newspaper, to be fit for his work, must constantly 
study, not necessarily the wishes, but the wants of those 
included within the entire scope of that comprehensive 
prayer. It was my deep certainty that Phillips Brooks 
was the one man in this day and generation who could 
best meet the religious needs of all sorts and conditions of 
men which led me to undertake, five years ago, the task 
of pointing out to the miscellaneous public, through the 
editorial columns of the Advertiser, certain characteristics 
of Boston's greatest preacher, and to pursue this plan 
systematically from year to year. There were reasons 
why it seemed that in some respects a "secular" journal 
would be a better medium than any other. 

There are five conditions or tendencies which mark the 
attitude of large classes of people toward the Christian 
Church at the present time. First, there is profound dis- 
content with regard to the lack of church unity. Second, 
there is a vast though as yet largely vague movement 
along lines of new theological thinking. Third, the thing 
that, for want of a better term, is called agnosticism, has a 



6 PREFACE 

powerful hold upon many educated minds and upon many 
more minds that wish to be thought educated. Fourth, a 
still more deadly danger to religion comes from a condi- 
tion which is neither hostility nor uncertainty, but simply 
indifference. Fifth, the intellectual and material tenden- 
cies of the time are so smothering men's spiritual nature 
that the word "goodness," whether in its religious or 
moral meaning, — though in very truth this is a distinction 
without a difference, — has come to signify, to multi- 
tudes of understandings, something which outwardly is 
" damned with faint praise," while inwardly it is despised. 
With respect to each and all of these current facts, I 
thought it worth while to put forth even such humble and 
feeble efforts as I could with a view to bringing yet more 
widely to bear the influence of Phillips Brooks in teaching 
clergymen how to preach and laymen how to listen. The 
hope that Christian unity is to be obtained by inducing all 
the separate sects to come over and join some one sect is 
chimerical to the last degree, and growing more evidently 
so every day. But " the unity of the spirit in the bond of 
peace " is more nearly possible to-day than it has been be- 
fore for a thousand years. When that is perfected, a 
mighty stride will have been taken toward the answer to 
the prayer of Jesus, " That they all may be one." I heard 
the rector of Trinity Church say, once, that birds, flying 
through the air, are not troubled how to cross our rivers. 
It was by lifting our conception of what the Church 
really is into a region far above denominational bounda- 
ries that he showed us how little need there is for such 
separations. 



PREFACE 7 

He was in profound sympathy with what is called the 
new theology ; but he attached far more importance to its 
spirit than to its letter. It meant with him. not so much 
a new set of doctrines as a new, a broader, freer, and more 
spiritual use of all doctrine, so that the most conserva- 
tive and the most progressive believers found their souls 
fed in listening to him. Though he never preached for 
the sake of winning theological converts, many prejudices 
against advanced opinions were removed by the discovery 
that the religious uses for which outworn dogmas are 
valued can be found in connection with the fresher, more 
rational thought of the modern era. He taught the 
Church how to hold on to the past, while gladly welcom- 
ing the present and the future. 

He disarmed scepticism by presenting religious faith in 
its simplicity, sufficiency, and sublimity. He did not de- 
mand less belief than man had before been called upon to 
grant, but more ; yet the old antagonism between reason 
and revelation disappeared, because he made men see that 
the essence of revelation is in the outreach of the divine 
mind to the human. Dr. Brooks overcame indifference to 
religious concerns by two methods. He entered into all 
sorts and conditions of human life with such subtle insight 
and imaginative sympathy that people realized for the first 
time that religion had something to give which they had 
been craving without knowing what or why ; and he re- 
vealed to this humdrum, workaday world of ours the 
glory of the commonplace. What Macaulay said of Lord 
Bacon could be said, with a slight verbal change, of 
Bishop Brooks. He preached about things in which 



8 PREFACE 

everybody was interested, in language which everybody 
understood. 

It is requisite, but it is not easy, to touch upon that qual- 
ity in him which was, after all, the most precious, peculiar, 
and wonderful. It is not easy, because the theme seems 
almost too sacred for words. That which most impressed 
the people whose privilege it was to know him nearly — 
and that inestimable privilege was freely bestowed upon 
the high and lowly, rich and poor, learned and unlearned, 
old and young, religious and irreligious — was not his 
greatness, though no one could escape the sense of the 
man's tremendous intellectual power. It was not his ex- 
traordinary eloquence. It was not his fine culture, his 
varied knowledge, his indescribable keenness and bril- 
liancy, or the charm and magnetism of his personal pres- 
ence. The thing that seemed supreme in Phillips Brooks 
was his goodness. I have said that the word "goodness" 
has come to be despised. Who can deny that this is so ? 
We hear it used as the antithesis of greatness. We hear 
it pronounced with a circumflex inflection. The idea pre- 
vails that goodness is admirable in children, quite appro- 
priate in women, characteristic of childlike and feminine 
men, but out of place in men of the world. The fault 
is partly chargeable to certain tendencies of the age in 
which we live, but more to the false definition that good 
people, by precept and example, have given the word. 
Bishop Brooks did this crowning service, that he made 
goodness mean the grandest thing of which humanity can 
conceive. His was no such goodness as we attach in 
thought to those whose names figure in the saints' calen- 



PREFACE 9 

dar. It was as far removed from the cloister as the east 
from the west. It was virile. It was instinct with life. 
It was wholesome. It was such as seemed every way 
suited to the pew as well as the pulpit, to the counting- 
house, the shop, and the drawing-room, State Street, the 
Back Bay, the North End. It won the hearts of students 
at Harvard University and of day-laborers who thronged 
to hear him in Faneuil Hall. 

I am writing on the day when the Church commemo- 
rates the resurrection of her crucified Lord. This is the 
first of these anniversaries to occur since that voice which 
never seemed so eloquent as at Easter-tide was hushed in 
the silence of death. Not until now have we so realized 
our unspeakable loss. And, when we try to find language 
in which to clothe our remembrance of the Bishop's char- 
acter, all descriptions fall short, save one. I do but re- 
peat what, in all reverence and thoughtfulness of the 
words' import, many have said already, when I add my 
poor tribute of testimony that, far beyond all other men 
whom we have known in life or through extant human 
records, the goodness of Phillips Brooks helps toward an 
understanding of what that of Jesus, the Christ, must 
have appeared to be to those who lived in Jerusalem in 
the first century, as we live in Boston in the nineteenth 
century. 

Milan Church Ayres. 

Boston, Easter, 1893. 



INTRODUCTION. 



The career of Phillips Brooks, although singu- 
larly unmarked by those incidents which are sup- 
posed to attract the attention of the daily press, 
was yet a frequent subject of editorial comment. 
I know of no man of like prominence, of whom 
there was so little to be reported, concerning 
whom it was necessary to say so much. The 
personal reminiscences which have been printed 
since his death would hardly suggest to a 
stranger the flavor of his personality. His ser- 
mons and addresses owed nothing in the way 
of popular impression to "occasions" or "sub- 
jects." It was not necessary to follow his utter- 
ances upon the controversies or even the re- 
forms of the day. He was not by first intention 
a reformer : he was in no sense a controver- 
sialist. Until the question of his election to the 



12 INTRODUCTION 

bishopric arose, there was nothing except him- 
self to hold him so steadily and vividly before 
the public eye. 

And yet no man ever held by any force of 
circumstance so secure a position in the public 
thought and affection as he held by the quality 
of his personality. His personality made him 
a vital part of his and our generation. He was 
inseparable from all that is best in it, its courage, 
sympathy, faith, and unquenchable hope. One 
could not think of that best thing in our com- 
mon Christianity, its spirit, — which we all agree 
in wanting, however much we may disagree about 
the way of getting it, — without thinking of him 
as its representative. He was a great Christian, 
reviving the ancient splendor of the Christian 
name, and illustrating the perfect adaptability of 
the Christian ideal to the nineteenth century. 
By common consent no one has translated so 
much of the Christian religion into current 
thought and life as Phillips Brooks. 

The secular press was quick to recognize 



INTRODUCTION 13 

and acknowledge in Mr. Brooks the presence 
of a religious genius. And its judgment re- 
flected as much honor upon itself as upon him. 
Its appreciation of him was no criticism of the 
Church or of the current Christianity, but rather 
a free and willing tribute of that which was 
truest and finest in the religious spirit and 
hope and purpose of the time. Hence the in- 
terest which was taken in the succession of the 
bishopric made vacant by the death of Bishop 
Paddock. Apart from the possibility of the 
election of Mr. Brooks, the question would have 
had only the ordinary ecclesiastical significance. 
But with that possibility it was instinctively 
felt that the opportunity had come to do a 
supreme act in the furtherance of Christianity. 
There was never any reason to doubt the sin- 
cerity, any more than the insight, of the secular 
press in its advocacy of the election of Mr. 
Brooks to the Episcopal see of Massachusetts. 

The editorial utterances of the Boston Daily 
Advertiser, w r hich have been gathered up in this 



14 INTRODUCTION 

volume, cover only the last five years ; but they 
antedate by a considerable time the official life 
of Bishop Brooks. And the editorials which 
precede his election show the same understand- 
ing of the man, the same appreciation of his 
power, the same acknowledgment of his rep- 
resentative character, as those which follow. 
The consistency of the thought running through 
these pages is everywhere manifest. The same 
tone is maintained throughout. There is no 
exaggeration as the discussion in regard to the 
bishopric grows earnest and intense, nor yet as 
the voice of congratulation is changed so sud- 
denly into that of lamentation. The editorial 
upon "The Great Grief," though vibrating with 
the passionate sympathy of the hour, is written 
with as true and steady a hand as that which 
penned the study of the source of " Phillips 
Brooks' Pow r er." The death of Bishop Brooks 
called forth the appropriate estimate of his mar- 
vellous influence, but the estimate was no after- 
thought. 



INTRODUCTION 1 5 

It is in every way fitting that these papers 
should be brought together and given perma- 
nent form. They were written under the influ- 
ence of personal gratitude and affection. When 
the writer was a student at New Haven, the 
lectures of Mr. Brooks were the great formative 
influence in his personal and professional life. 
The same influence continued as the writer was 
led to Boston, and was brought into more per- 
manent relation with the work and teachings of 
Mr. Brooks. The sentiments therefore which 
found expression from time to time in the edi- 
torial pages of the Advertiser, whether in the 
form of studies, or discussion, or tribute, were to 
an unusual degree personal in their character 
and motive. 

But, quite apart from their origin, these articles 
have a permanent representative value. They 
show precisely what men thought of Phillips 
Brooks before the process of idealization began. 
Here was one who was not greatly misunder- 
stood or unappreciated in his own time. Here 



1 6 INTRODUCTION 

was a prophet " acceptable in his own country." 
Here was a representative of Christianity of 
whom his fellow-Christians said with one accord, 
even in a period marked by no little of contro- 
versy and variance, "This man belongs to us 
all : he is an assurance and sign of the coming 
unity." And men at large felt that he was more 
human because more Christian, that he was in 
some very real sense, in his own person, a type 
of the larger humanity. 

The future historian will turn to such contem- 
porary papers as these for the material on which 
to base his estimate of the social and spiritual 
life of this generation. Meanwhile those who 
knew Phillips Brooks will find in these particular 
papers some of the most discriminating and 
appreciative of all the judgments passed upon 
him, interwoven with those events in his later 
public life which naturally called them forth. 

William Jewett Tucker. 

Andovkr, Mass., April 24, 1893. 



PHILLIPS BROOKS IN BOSTON. 



A MORE EXCELLENT WAY. 

[March 26, 1888.] 

In the course of his " Lyman Beecher Lectures 
on Preaching,'' delivered before the divinity stu- 
dents of Yale College in the winter of 1876-77, 
the Rev. Phillips Brooks, D.D., took occasion to 
comment on the short and easy explanations 
which are frequently offered to account for the 
phenomenal success of a particular clergyman. 
Sometimes the secret is thought to lie in his elo- 
cution, sometimes in his personal presence, some- 
times in his choice of simple, or, again, of ornate 
diction. The lecturer told of an instance where 
he had heard the power of a pulpit-orator of 
great renown ascribed to the sweetly impressive 
manner in which he raised his hand ! Against 
all such shallow judgments Dr. Brooks protested, 
declaring that any true success, in the pulpit as 
17 



l8 PHILLIPS BROOKS IN BOSTON 

out of the pulpit, must be a complex result, issu- 
ing from many and deep springs of power. 

Of all that the eloquent rector of Trinity said 
on this subject he himself supplies an illustra- 
tion. Everybody recognizes his wonderful suc- 
cess in winning earnest attention to religious 
teachings ; but there are many different ways of 
accounting for it. On a few points, indeed, all 
critics agree. That Phillips Brooks is eloquent, 
impassioned, imaginative, analytical, liberal, a 
man of virile intellect and, withal, most devout 
faith, is apparent to every listener. But this 
does not suffice to solve the problem. Each of 
these qualities is to be found in other clergymen. 
And, if their combination in a single individual is 
rare, still the fact remains that the difference in 
results is out of all proportion to the difference 
in the qualities which are obvious to every ob-. 
server. What is that additional something which 
we must find in our great preacher if we are at 
all to understand why he towers above his breth- 
ren, as much in achievement as in stature ? 

In attempting to answer this question, we are 
driven once more to the preacher's own words as 
the best illustration of his own characteristics. 
At the close of the series of lectures at New 



A MORE EXCELLENT WAY 1 9 

Haven already referred to, an hour was set aside 
by Dr. Brooks for hearing and answering any 
questions which the students might put to him. 
One of the questions was, " What do you think 
of Dwight L. Moody ? " And the instantaneous 
answer was, "What impresses me most about 
Mr. Moody is the astonishing good sense of the 
man." While all men would heartily assent to 
the statement that Phillips Brooks has abun- 
dantly the quality alluded to, it is probable that 
few, if any, of his admirers have thought of enu- 
merating that among the secrets of his eminence. 
Good sense seems like such a plain and homely 
thing that we are accustomed to speak of it as 
"common sense." Probably the reason why the 
rector of Trinity is so quick to discern, and so de- 
lighted to discern, good sense in other men is 
that, in some subtile way, he feels how dominant 
it is over his own career. Let one look closely 
into the methods of Trinity pulpit, and he will 
rind that what is said and done there is made up 
of certain commanding qualities, such as we have 
noticed above, such as it is impossible not to 
recognize, plus good sense. Only it is not ex- 
actly " common sense," or, if we call it that, we 
must needs have recourse to the threadbare say- 



20 PHILLIPS BROOKS IN BOSTON 

ing that u ' common sense' is very uncommon." 
It is exceedingly good sense, delicate and con- 
summate good sense, good sense which rises to 
a height level with genius. 

A few instances must suffice. The church is 
crowded by people eager only to hear the ser- 
mon. Does the preacher slight the service, that 
the sermon may stand out in brighter contrast ? 
A popular preacher who lacked something of the 
highest title to popularity would do that. Not so 
this man. He puts into his utterance of creed 
and litany and prescribed forms of prayer such 
wealth of personal consecration that a person 
who should hear that, and nothing more, would 
remember the thrilling experience all his days. 
Dr. Brooks is known as a " Broad Churchman," 
but he preaches neither to defend the Broad 
Church nor to attack the High Church. He 
shares the spirit of the " new theology " ; but 
probably no man ever heard him try to prove the 
new or to disprove the old. Yet certainly no 
man ever listened to him without discovering 
that the preacher's theological attitude is open as 
the sunlight. 

This is the lesson which Trinity pulpit has for 
every earnest preacher of every denomination. 



A MORE EXCELLENT WAY 2 1 

Do not attempt to imitate Phillips Brooks in 
those gifts with which nature endows each man 
as she will, and of which Boston's beloved clergy- 
man has received so much more than most mor- 
tals, but learn from the example set in that pul- 
pit how to do the work which is given you to do 
in " a more excellent way." 



2 2 PHILLIPS BROOKS IN BOSTON 



DR. BROOKS' LENTEN LECTURES. 

[March 29, 1888.] 

While Rev. Morgan Dix, D.D., rector of Trin- 
ity Church in New York, has been startling the 
religious and secular world by his Lenten lect- 
ures against what he considers the sins of mod- 
ern life, especially in relation to society, literature, 
and art, the still more eminent rector of Trinity 
Church in Boston, Rev. Phillips Brooks, D.D., 
has devoted himself to the task of expository dis- 
course. In doing this throughout the Lenten 
season now drawing to a close, Dr. Brooks has 
followed a custom of his own from which he has 
not deviated for a number of years. Whatever 
may be the merits or demerits of the method pur- 
sued by Dr. Dix, this year as formerly, our pur- 
pose at present is not to discuss that somewhat 
vexed question, but rather to study briefly the 
lessons afforded by the widely contrasted prac- 
tice of Boston's famous divine. 

Nothing could ordinarily be more unpromising 
than a series of expository sermons or lectures. 



DR. BROOKS LENTEN LECTURES 23 

But the genius of Phillips Brooks is shown, in 
this connection as in so many others, by his abil- 
ity to glorify the commonplace. His expository 
method is as follows : He considers his subject 
in general and in particular. But the compre- 
hensive statements deal only and instantly with 
the very vital essence of the matter, setting out 
in two or three bold strokes a picture of the 
scene or the occasion, declaring with incisive pre- 
cision the purpose which was uppermost in the 
writer's mind. And the details are taken, not 
seriatim, but for their fitness to elucidate the 
subject. Two men with pallet and brush sit 
down before a landscape. One attempts to paint 
everything, each tree, each leaf on the tree, rocks 
and pebbles and sand, every separate blade of 
grass. The other artist delineates those features 
of the scene which give derlniteness to the entire 
picture. Space, perspective, light and shade, 
earth and sky, are indicated ; and for detail there 
is such and so much as will suggest the truth and 
beauty of the whole. The former method is that 
of ordinary expository preachers. The latter 
method is that of Phillips Brooks. 

We can best make our meaning plain by refer- 
ence to some of the Lenten lectures delivered in 



24 PHILLIPS BROOKS IN BOSTON 

Trinity Church in this city during the past four 
seasons. In 1885 there were half a dozen lec- 
tures on the Pauline Epistles. In 1886 the chief 
series of lectures dealt with " certain great 
chapters in the greatest of the Gospels," — the 
Gospel according to John. One year ago Dr. 
Brooks discussed " The Conversations of Jesus. " 
This year an entirely new field was entered upon 
by taking up and considering various parts of the 
Book of Common Prayer. In discussing the 
writings of the Apostle Paul, Dr. Brooks brought 
forward in a most vivid way the personal element 
in the writer, and in those whom the writer was 
addressing. The mighty place which belongs to 
human affections in every institution or move- 
ment affecting for good the destinies of mankind 
was shown by illustrations drawn from the narra- 
tive of " the disciple whom Jesus loved." A pro- 
found yet simple examination of those conversa- 
tions which Christ had with the people whom he 
met in public or in private served to emphasize 
the identity of human experiences in all ages and 
under all conditions. 

In treating of the Prayer-Book this year, Dr. 
Brooks began by pointing out that, according to 
the fundamental conception of that book, the 



DR. BROOKS LENTEN LECTURES 25 

prayers are the people's prayers, and the Church 
belongs to the people, not to the clergy. Pro- 
ceeding to unfold the meaning of forms grown 
familiar by constant use, attention was called to 
the foremost place which the doctrine of the 
Trinity occupies in the litany. This was de- 
clared to be an indication of the way in which 
the Church should regard all doctrine. " It is 
significant that not in her creeds, but in her 
prayers, the Church most clearly states her dog- 
mas. It is significant that the Church holds her 
dogmas, not for their essential value, but for their 
uses. . . . But does it mean that you cannot pray 
until you can first utter these critical and test 
words ? Is this great doctrine used as a sort of 
challenge at the doorway, so that souls who can- 
not thus believe in God shall feel that they 
cannot approach him ? Surely not. . . . Let the 
soul pray, ' O God, if there be a God, come now 
and help me.' We recognize fully the most im- 
perfect conception of God as a basis of prayer. 
But the richer and fuller the conception, the 
richer and fuller will the prayer be." 

It is in this way that the Lenten lectures deliv- 
ered from year to year in Trinity Church, Bos- 
ton, are made so interesting, so helpful, so 



26 PHILLIPS BROOKS IN BOSTON 

memorable, that vast throngs are always in at- 
tendance at their delivery, that whenever re- 
ported and published they are eagerly read in all 
parts of the country, and that their influence out- 
reaches and outlasts the immediate occasion. 
The lectures are full of both doctrinal and prac- 
tical theology, but always of the kind that 
springs with seeming spontaneity out of the 
theme and out of living present human interests. 



SENTIMENT AND SENTIMENTALITY 2^ 



SENTIMENT AND SENTIMENTALITY. 

[July 17, 1888.] 

In Dr. Brooks' wise and eloquent sermon 
preached in Trinity Church last Sunday morning 
before the National Prison-Reform Association 
a striking contrast was drawn between sentiment 
and sentimentality. The pulpit orator recog- 
nized it as an undoubted fact that the greatest 
obstacle in the way of the men and women who 
are seeking to make our prison management more 
humane is the popular idea that they are senti- 
mentalists : whereas it is not sentimentality, but 
sentiment, which inspires them. " Sentiment/' 
he said, "is fed straight out of the heart of 
truth : sentimentality is distorted by personal 
whims. Sentiment is active : sentimentality is 
lazy. Sentiment is self-sacrificing : sentimen- 
tality is self-indulgent. Sentiment loves facts : 
sentimentality hates them. Sentiment is clear- 
sighted : sentimentality is blind. In a word, sen- 
timent is the health of nature, and sentimentality 
is its disease." 



28 PHILLIPS BROOKS IN BOSTON 

The distinction thus sharply drawn is too often 
overlooked, and is of vital importance. Exhibi- 
tions of sentimentality in connection with prisons 
and prisoners we have had ad nauseam. Its 
most disgusting features appear when some 
brutal wretch lies under sentence of death for 
unprovoked murder. The flowers sent to his 
cell, the dainty food, the rush to obtain his auto- 
graph, the heap of letters expressing tender inter- 
est which the postman brings him every morn- 
ing, and the innumerable signatures attached to 
the petitions for pardon, — all this froth and slop 
of sentimentality are as familiar as they are dis- 
creditable. Even when the prisoner is not under 
capital sentence, there is more or less of the same 
sort of thing, the degree of folly exhibited being 
usually in proportion to the brutality of the 
crime. 

Perhaps it is not strange, yet surely it is not 
necessary, that in many quarters the aims and 
methods of the National Prison-Reform Associa- 
tion should be confounded with such displays as 
we have alluded to. As Phillips Brooks says, 
" The great human sentiments are the only uni- 
versal and perpetual powers." Sentiments of 
pity for the wretched and of sympathy with the 



SENTIMENT AND SENTIMENTALITY 29 

State in its efforts to repress and punish crime ; 
sentiments which are full of justice, firmness and 
sternness, as well as full of charitableness, — do in- 
deed underlie the self-sacrificing efforts of the 
Association over which ex-President Hayes pre- 
sides. But with sentimentality these people have 
no part or lot. 



30 PHILLIPS BROOKS IN BOSTON 



PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES. 
[Dec. 17, 1888.] 

The Rev. Phillips Brooks, D.D., in the course 
of his " Lyman Beecher Lectures " at Yale College 
in 1876-77, said, addressing theological students, 
that it seemed to be expected that every man who 
undertook to give them advice would touch on 
the question whether or not the minister should 
use a manuscript in the pulpit ; and that, for his 
part, he would say this : However true it might 
be that an extemporaneous sermon should receive 
the same care in preparation as one preached 
from manuscript, yet in actual fact it almost 
never did. On that ground Dr. Brooks emphat- 
ically expressed his preference for the written 
discourse. It is evident, however, that his opin- 
ion has undergone a change, and that, like Dr. 
Storrs, he is convinced that the manuscript in the 
pulpit is a hindrance, and not a help. More 
and more of late the famous rector of Trinity 
preaches extemporaneously, and that may now 
be said to be his usual practice. He may not 



PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES 3 1 

have changed his opinion of years ago as to the 
likelihood that extemporaneousness will mean 
carelessness, but he manifestly takes pains that 
it shall mean no such thing in his pulpit. Dr. 
Brooks' torrent of unwritten speech comes pour- 
ing forth as accurate, as elegant, as compact, as 
it could be made by any labor of the pen. 



32 PHILLIPS BROOKS IN BOSTON 



PHILLIPS BROOKS' POWER. 

[Dec. 26, 1888.] 

It is impossible for any one who is present 
where Phillips Brooks speaks to avoid listening. 
He may not hear anything except a torrent of 
sounds and echoes ; for that architectural master- 
piece of Richardson, Trinity Church, is extremely 
defective, considered with reference to its acous- 
tic properties. But, if a person is seated in such 
a place that the words of the speaker are audible, 
he will hear a great deal, and will give attention, 
whether he wants to or not. Many curious expe- 
riences have been narrated of strangers in Bos- 
ton who have dropped into Trinity Church on a 
Sunday, not knowing or not caring that it con- 
tained the pulpit of a famous preacher, and who, 
when the sermon began, observing that the text 
was one on which they had heard a great many 
discourses, and that the preacher talked very rap- 
idly, and not very distinctly, resolved not to listen. 
The conclusion of such narratives always is that 
the stranger presently found himself paying eager 



PHILLIPS BROOKS' POWER 33 

attention without having intended it or quite 
knowing how he came to do so. 

Indeed, how he came to do so is one of the un- 
solved enigmas on which the students of such 
phenomena never tire of exercising their inge- 
nuity. Of course, this does not mean that the 
fact itself is matter of surprise. That Phillips 
Brooks is interesting is just as obvious as that 
one of Turner's pictures is interesting. But why ? 
Perhaps another Ruskin will some day arise to 
tell us. 

Few great preachers have ever so baffled the 
critics as has Phillips Brooks. Beecher was, in 
the first place, a trained and skilled elocutionist. 
In the second place, he was almost supremely 
eloquent, in the common acceptation of the term. 
Spurgeon has the quality which manuals of rhet- 
oric call " nervousness," — a quality for which the 
common people have no name, but which the 
commonest as well as the most uncommon people 
profoundly feel when they encounter it in litera- 
ture or oratory. Talmage is dramatic. Storrs' 
power was aptly, though but partially, indicated 
by Theodore Tilton a number of years ago, when, 
as editor of the Independent, he recommended Dr. 
Storrs to accept the call just extended him from 



\ 



34 PHILLIPS BROOKS IN BOSTON 

a society worshipping in one of the most magnifi- 
cent of Boston's churches ; for, said Tilton, 
"how grandly he would fill it with the added 
pomp of his gorgeous words ! " Moody is viv- 
idly colloquial. Joseph Parker of London is 
epigrammatic. Cannon Farrar illustrates his 
themes with historical pictures thrown, life-size, 
upon the screen from the stereopticon of his im- 
agination. Professor Swing of Chicago is a 
prose poet. 

No judicious critic would think to find the 
source of Phillips Brooks' power in any or all of 
the qualities above enumerated, though none of 
them, excepting skill in elocution, is wholly ab- 
sent from Trinity pulpit. The failure of all at- 
tempts hitherto made in that direction is a warn- 
ing, not to be lightly disregarded, against any 
new effort towards solving this complex enigma. 
Without being guilty of such rashness, one may 
nevertheless point out two manifest elements of 
that attraction which brings crowds to Trinity 
Church from week to week and from year to 
year. 

Phillips Brooks is an " evangelical " preacher, in 
the true sense of that often perverted term. His 
Christmas sermon, reported in this morning's 



PHILLIPS BROOKS POWER 35 

Advertiser, is an evangelical sermon ; that 
is. it sets forth with absolute fidelity the 
tvangelium, the gospel story. That he believes 
what he preaches, and believes it to be in- 
finitely important, no candid man doubts who 
hears him. It seems like a paradox, but it is 
true that many otherwise good sermons fail 
because there is not enough religion in them. 
From text to peroration one of Phillips Brooks' 
sermons is crowded with the spiritual food that 
men are hungering for, whether they know it or 
not. 

Xo better illustration was probably ever fur- 
nished of Dr. Brooks' famous definition of a ser- 
mon — '"'the truth through personality" — than 
one of his own sermons. The whole man, phys- 
ical and mental, moral and spiritual, preaches. 
Any true solution of the problem of the marvel- 
lous success which we have been considering 
must contain the converse of that apothegm 
which Phillips Brooks gave to the students of 
Yale College in 1S76 : "Xo man can do much 
for others who is not much himself." 



36 PHILLIPS BROOKS IN BOSTON 



WATCH-NIGHT MEETING. 
[Jan. 1, 1889.] 

Rev. Phillips Brooks is constantly furnishing 
in himself and his work illustrations of his own 
maxims. Probably this fact is susceptible of a 
two-fold explanation. He frames his maxims, as 
all profound maxims must be framed, out of the 
inner life of him who utters them ; and he is con- 
stantly striving to conform the actual to the ideal. 
For instance, one of his famous sayings is that 
Christianity steadily refuses to crystallize itself 
as the religion of any class or creed. And no 
better illustration of this saying can be found 
than a Trinity Church " watch-night " meeting. 

Everybody has heard of Methodist and Second 
Adventist watch-night meetings ; of the prayers, 
of the songs, the testimonies, the audible manifes- 
tations of religious enthusiasm with which mem- 
bers of these communions are accustomed in 
certain localities, and especially were accustomed 
in former times, "to watch the old year out and 
the new year in." The impression derived from 



WATCH-NIGHT MEETING 37 

witnessing or reading accounts of such gather- 
ings naturally is that a watch-night service is pe- 
culiarly adapted to places and people where and 
among whom religious fervor is more highly es- 
teemed than the graces of culture. Accordingly, 
the public devotional observance of the midnight 
hour between December 31 and January 1 is not 
extensively practised in New England. But, year 
after year, the wealthiest church in Boston, con- 
nected with that denomination which, of all Prot- 
estant communions, has the stateliest ceremonial 
of worship, celebrates " watch-night " with ser- 
vices so impressive, so solemn, so deeply spirit- 
ual, that the memory of them remains indelibly 
stamped upon the minds of many participants. 

Last night, when the hour of eleven opened, 
Trinity Church appeared to be filled in every 
part ; yet for some time afterward there was a 
constant stream of people entering and following 
the ushers, who kept on providing seats in all 
possible places until not another seat could be 
found ; and then a multitude remained standing, 
until the last hour of 1888 was ended and the 
first hour of 1889 had come. 

When two hymns had been sung and a brief 
service from the Prayer-Book was concluded, 



38 PHILLIPS BROOKS IN BOSTON 

Rev. Leighton Parks delivered a tenderly affec- 
tionate address on that scene of our Saviour's 
life where the people went out to meet him with 
palm-branches and hosannas. The application 
was to suggest how we are to go out to meet 
Christ during the coming year. " It may be," 
said Mr. Parks, " that you can only look into the 
coming year with fear and trembling. Let it 
come in any way it will, so only it enters into 
your heart, and enthrones itself in the spirit of 
love and undying faith. May we not go out to 
meet the king, simply willing to accept him as he 
comes ? " At the conclusion of Mr. Parks' ad- 
dress another hymn was sung; and then Rev. 
Phillips Brooks spoke three or four minutes, 
urging home the thought that during every mo- 
ment of the closing year God's hand has held 
and guided us, and that during the coming year 
we rest still more completely in his love, not 
because he loves us more, but because we may 
open our hearts wider to receive his love. 

Then, . as the hands of the clock that stood 
within the chancel-railing pointed to one minute 
of midnight, the great congregation bowed in 
silent prayer until twelve strokes had been 
sounded forth and 1889 had begun. The united 



WATCH-NIGHT MEETING 39 

repetition of the Lord's Prayer aloud ended this 
solemn stage of the service, after which Dr. 
Brooks again spoke a few earnest words, express- 
ing the hope that all present might live stronger, 
purer, more manly, more womanly, more Christ- 
like lives in the year that had begun than in the 
year that had closed. 



40 PHILLIPS BROOKS IN BOSTON 



THE DOCTRINE OF THE EPISCOPACY. 

[Jan. 22, 1889.] 

It is not true that Dr. Brooks " does not be- 
lieve in episcopacy." At any rate, it is not true 
that he has ever said so or given any indication 
of such disbelief. No more is it true that the 
" Episcopal Church has always held, concerning 
the chief office in the sacred ministry," the ex- 
treme and exclusive sacerdotal views which Dr. 
Brooks opposes. Prof. George P. Fisher of Yale 
College showed, in his Dudleian lecture at Har- 
vard some weeks ago, what was already known 
to all men learned in Church history, that in the 
beginning the Anglican church admitted the va- 
lidity of non-episcopal ordination. 



PHILLIPS BROOKS AND LYMAN ABBOTT 41 



PHILLIPS BROOKS AND LYMAN ABBOTT. 
[Nov. 11, 1889.] 

Lyman Abbott, who preached last evening in 
the chapel of Harvard University, and thus inau-. 
gurated his fortnight's term of service as chap- 
lain in that institution, divides with Phillips 
Brooks the honor of pre-eminence as a preacher 
to studious young men. Both these distinguished 
clergymen have a peculiar genius for so present- 
ing Christian doctrine that it shall commend it- 
self at once to the conscience and the reason. 
The difficulties which modern scholarship en- 
counters when asked to accept the creeds that 
have long been held as standards of faith are 
overcome in the teachings of Dr. Brooks and Dr. 
Abbott, not by throwing away part of historical 
Christianity or by appealing from reason to rev- 
elation, but by stripping religious truth of specu- 
lative accretions and presenting it in original 
simplicity, sublimity, and power. How to be- 
lieve in Christianity and at the same time keep 
an open mind for all the truths of science and 



42 PHILLIPS BROOKS IN BOSTON 

humanity that are coming to be seen in the light 
of our times as never before, and how to make 
all knowledge and all faith mutually helpful, — 
this is what many a Harvard student must have 
learned, or found guidance toward learning, last 
evening in Appleton Chapel, as he gazed into the 
luminous face and listened to the scholarly and 
inspiring words of Henry Ward Beecher's suc- 
cessor. 



EPISCOPAL SCHISM PREDICTED 43 



EPISCOPAL SCHISM PREDICTED. 
[March 11, 1890.] 

A writer in Saturday's Transcript, who signs 
himself "C," gives warning that the Protestant 
Episcopal Church is " approaching a crisis " be- 
cause certain clergymen of that denomination 
recognize the ministerial standing of other cler- 
gymen not of that denomination. Although no 
names are mentioned, it is perfectly evident that 
" C." has in mind the most distinguished 
preacher in Boston, who is also the most distin- 
guished preacher of the Protestant Episcopal 
Church of this country. If thumping hard words 
could annihilate an alleged heresiarch, even the 
towering form of Trinity's rector would vanish 
before the shower of verbal missiles fired at him. 
" Giving the lie to her laws," — i.e., the laws of 
the Church, — "lawlessness," "state of anarchy," 
"openly preach doctrines opposed to those of 
the Church," are some of the words and phrases 
that are employed against a man who is doing 
more every day to bring honor upon his Church 



44 PHILLIPS BROOKS IN BOSTON 

than any dozen advocates of intolerance and 
sectarian arrogance have done in their whole 
lives. 

As for the specific arguments that " C." em- 
ploys to prove his charge of violating obligations 
to the Episcopal Church, a candid reader is 
almost compelled to believe that this heresy- 
hunter has been too busy looking after other 
men's supposed shortcomings ever to have stud- 
ied the laws or history of the Church for which 
he assumes to speak. " Then are we in a most 
sorry state of discipline/' cries this pruner in the 
Lord's vineyard," "when any single priest can, 
unrebuked by his diocesan (bishop), declare a 
man, not episcopally ordained, to be a minister 
of Christ ; for that term should have but one 
meaning to him in view of his ordination vow." 
Now, the truth is, though " C." does not appear 
to be aware of it, that the Protestant Episcopal 
Church has never adopted any declaration which 
denies that any other ordination but its own is 
valid, or any rule of discipline which forbids its 
rectors to acknowledge the ministerial standing 
of clergymen belonging to other branches of 
the Universal Church. Moreover, it is matter of 
abundant historical record that many of the fa- 



EPISCOPAL SCHISM PREDICTED 45 

thers and founders of the Church of England, 
including those most justly held in reverence, 
distinctly repudiated the notion, which has 
sprung up in certain quarters in later times, that 
no other than episcopal ordination can be effica- 
cious. From the beginning until now there have 
been " Broad Churchmen," whether so called or 
not, who refuse to limit their faith to cast-iron 
creeds or their fellowship to sectarian and sacer- 
dotal bounds. These names, from Hooker and 
Tillotson to Maurice, Robertson, Stanley, Cham- 
bers, Hall, and Phillips Brooks, have been and 
are stars in the Church's constellations of glory. 
" C.'s " argument from the " ordinal " would pro- 
duce smiles if the subject were less sacred. It is 
declared in the ordinal that "these orders of min- 
isters " — to wit, bishops, priests, and deacons — 
"have been from the Apostles' time." If the 
Church, in her Prayer-Book, insists upon the ne- 
cessity of episcopal ordination, in order to the 
constituting a man a lawful bishop, priest, or dea- 
con, is it not giving the lie to her laws when any 
individual priest recognizes a man not so or- 
dained as a lawful minister ? This is the gist of 
the accusation and plea for a verdict of guilty. 
As if one denomination might not lay down prin- 



46 PHILLIPS BROOKS IN BOSTON 

ciples for its own guidance without denying the 
right of any other denomination to take a differ- 
ent view ! 

" C." is probably more alarmed or more ex- 
pectant than there is occasion for him to be, if 
he either fears or hopes, to use his own words, 
' 'there will be a schism in this Church, the like 
of which has never been seen." All the signs 
point the other way. Schisms result from quar- 
rels. It takes two parties to make a quarrel. 
Broad Churchmen in the Episcopal Church will 
not be one of the parties. They have no wish to 
cast out their opponents. Their opponents have 
no power to cast them out, and they will not 
take themselves out. They are there to stay. 



THE VACANT BISHOPRIC 47 



THE VACANT BISHOPRIC. 

[April 1, 1891.] 

In another column of to-day's Advertiser will 
be found by far the fullest and most significant 
presentation yet made public of Protestant Epis- 
copal opinion in the diocese of Massachusetts 
regarding the choice of a successor to the late 
lamented Bishop Paddock. The ecclesiastical 
polity of the denomination is such that the field 
of choice is not limited by diocesan boundaries. 
The episcopal chair may be filled by calling into 
service a man who resides three thousand miles 
away. It is by no means an uncommon thing 
for possible candidates in a diocese to be passed 
over, in order to place in the bishopric a promi- 
nent clergyman from a distant locality. But it 
hardly needs to be said that, other things being 
equal, almost any Churchman would rather have 
a selection made out of home talent. 

What adds a very special interest to the forth- 
coming election to the bishopric of Massachu- 
setts is the circumstance that a clergyman whom 



48 PHILLIPS BROOKS IN BOSTON 

probably universal sentiment pronounces to be 
the most distinguished Protestant Episcopal rec- 
tor in the United States already belongs to this 
diocese. The wide-spread feeling that no other 
name is so fit to be pronounced in this connec- 
tion as that of Phillips Brooks, cannot cause sur- 
prise. It would indeed be matter for surprise if 
such a feeling did not exist. It is not confined 
to Massachusetts. It is safe to say that there is 
not a city, village, or hamlet in the Union, where 
Churchmen dwell, where the idea of Boston's far- 
famed Trinity rector has not occurred as that 
of the one man who might most naturally be 
thought of to fill the vacant place. 

The only cogent reason that can be rendered 
against the choice of Dr. Brooks is based on 
his very eminence. The pulpit from which he 
preaches twice every Sunday to congregations 
limited only by the capacity of the great church 
is a throne of power. His qualifications as a 
metropolitan preacher are surpassing and splen- 
did. Is it not better, many people are asking, 
that he continue to occupy his present place, 
where not only his regular congregation, but mul- 
titudes of others, including strangers temporarily 
sojourning in our city, can hear him, than that 



THE VACANT BISHOPRIC 49 

the burdens of administrative routine be imposed 
upon him, with the necessity of travelling from 
church to church in the discharge of official func- 
tions ? In short, there is no question about the 
ntness of Phillips Brooks for the bishopric; but 
there is felt to be some question about the ntness 
of the bishopric for Phillips Brooks. 

On the other hand, it is considered that the 
position of chief pastor of the Protestant Episco- 
pal Church in Massachusetts is an exalted one ; 
that it opens up vast and varied opportunities of 
usefulness and influence ; that, when occupied by 
a man of national and international reputation, it 
would at once become an immense factor in all 
the councils of the Church assembled in national 
convention ; and, finally, that every parish in the 
diocese — that is, in the Commonwealth — would 
feel the mighty and quickening power of personal 
contact with such eloquence, culture, and spirit- 
ual consecration as every parish needs and as is 
not easy to find. Would Phillips Brooks accept 
if elected ? This question all are asking, but no 
authoritative answer is to be expected until and 
unless the situation becomes such that an answer 
is officially called for. To say that he is not a 
candidate in any sense whatever, otherwise than 



50 PHILLIPS BROOKS IN BOSTON 

as the loving admiration of the clergy and laity- 
makes him the choice of a large element of the 
diocese, is but to say what all know who know 
the man. For knowledge beyond that we must 
await swiftly coming events. 



A NON-PARTISAN EISHOP 5 1 



A NON-PARTISAN BISHOP. 

[April 24, 1891.] 

There is one thing which every member, cleri- 
ical or lay, of the Diocesan Convention soon to 
be held in Boston, ought to set his face like a 
fiint against ; and that thing is the drawing of 
party lines in the matter of choosing a successor 
to the late Bishop Paddock. Nothing else so 
robs an ecclesiastical election of its proper influ- 
ence as partisanship. This is especially true re- 
garding the election of a bishop ; for, in order to 
command the respect due to his exalted position, 
it must be felt that he is the bishop of the whole 
Church, and not of a faction, great or small, 
within the Church. His functions are largely ad- 
ministrative, and in particular they are judicial. 
There is the same reason for removing the choice 
of a bishop from the belittling and embittering 
strife of party politics that there is for keeping 
the judicial ermine unspotted from such strife. 
For these reasons it would be a great calamity 
to the Protestant Episcopal Church in Massachu- 



52 PHILLIPS BROOKS IN BOSTON 

setts if the coming Convention should allow itself 
to be swayed in the discharge of its greatest duty 
by any appeals to factional watchwords, by any 
organization outside of the Church, seeking to 
rule the Church, and most especially by any 
secret caucus. 

Human nature being what it is, there is great 
danger of this calamity, unless it be avoided by 
a general, spontaneous agreement to lay aside 
all divisions on minor issues, and unite, for the 
honor of the Church, upon some man so able, so 
famous, so imbued with spiritual fervor, so uni- 
versally beloved inside and outside of the de- 
nomination, and, withal, so large-minded, that 
his election would not mean the victory of one 
section over another, but a common act for the 
common good. 

No doubt there are times when this rule would 
be difficult to follow, because no man is available 
who has and is known to have these pre-eminent 
qualities. Happily there is at present a freedom 
from such difficulty. Within the diocese of Mas- 
sachusetts is a clergyman wiio answers com- 
pletely to this description. There was for a 
time much question whether or not he would 
consent to take the episcopate if it were offered 



A NON-PARTISAN BISHOP 53 

him, no matter how urgently. The Advertiser 
was some time ago able to state on reliable au- 
thority that he would not refuse to obey the call 
of his brethren if it came to him in such a way 
as to make the path of duty plain. The move- 
ment for the choice of Phillips Brooks is in no 
way, shape, or sense a party movement. It is as 
far from that as the east is from the west. It is 
as strong with many who differ widely from his 
theological views as with those who agree most 
closely with him in respect to doctrine. The 
movement is unorganized because it is sponta- 
neous. It is strong in its own proper strength, 
strong by reason of its reasonableness. It is not 
a " Low " Church movement, or a " Broad " 
Church movement, or a " High " Church move- 
ment. It is more than any one or all of them. 
It is a Church movement. 

No mistake could well be greater than that of 
those who fear that, if Dr. Brooks were elected to 
the bishopric, he would show disfavor to such 
clergymen as might have adopted different ideas 
from those of the bishop regarding " apostolic 
succession," validity and efficacy of sacraments, 
ritualistic ceremonials, vestments, revision of the 
Prayer-Book, relation of the Protestant Epis- 



54 PHILLIPS BROOKS IN BOSTON 

copal Church to other Christian bodies, and 
such like matters. Dr. Brooks is too much 
of a man to be intolerant. The liberty he 
claims for himself he claims for others, and would 
be more than ready to grant to them. In short, 
he would not be the bishop of a part of the 
Church, but of the whole. 

And what a bishop he would be ! Inferior 
men, with little else to commend them, might in- 
deed answer as candidates of this or that party ; 
but the most distinguished clergyman of his de- 
nomination in the country is named for the 
vacant place solely because of his surpassing 
fitness. 



( A NON-PARTISAN BISHOP 55 



"A NON-PARTISAN BISHOP." 

[April 28, 1891.] 

The Advertiser takes great pleasure in laying 
before its readers this morning a communication 
in advocacy of the election of Rev. Dr. Satterlee 
as Protestant Episcopal bishop of Massachusetts. 
Our correspondent is a layman who justly pos- 
sesses in a high degree public confidence as a 
leader in professional and religious activities. 
There is no man in the diocese whose views at 
this juncture are entitled to receive greater at- 
tention. 

No exception can be taken to anything that 
" Conservative " says in praise of his candidate's 
many admirable qualities of head and heart. 
Our own news columns of last Thursday con- 
tained equally extended and emphatic tributes of 
a similar nature. 

It is therefore with unfeigned astonishment 
that we note the accusation that the Advertiser 
has made an attack on Dr. Satterlee's supporters. 
The editorial article in question was not intended 



56 PHILLIPS BROOKS IN BOSTON 

as any such attack, either direct or indirect ; nor 
did it contain any language which, by fair con- 
struction, as it seems to us, could be so inter- 
preted. Dr. Satterlee's name was not mentioned. 
No allusion to him was made. Nothing was said 
about the fact of the selection of a candidate op- 
posed to Phillips Brooks. No syllable of fault 
was found with those who, from whatever con- 
scientious motives, prefer some man of less emi- 
nence than the Massachusetts divine whose name 
is arousing so much spontaneous enthusiasm 
among all schools of thought in the Church. 
The head and front of our offending consists in 
having uttered a warning on general grounds, in 
the interests of the Church as a whole, and with- 
out any criticism of any candidate or any candi- 
date's friends, against the peril of making the 
choice of a bishop a party affair. We think our 
valued and courteous correspondent does unin- 
tentional injustice to the friends of Dr. Satterlee 
in seeming to say that an exhortation to unity, 
and to a laying aside of factional strife for the 
good and glory of a common cause, must be un- 
derstood as aimed at that most excellent clergy- 
man or at his adherents. 



BISHOP PERRY'S LETTER 57 

BISHOP PERRY'S LETTER. 
[May 26, 1891.] 

All signs point to the confirmation of Phillips 
Brooks by an overwhelming majority of votes. 
At the present writing the poll as reported stands 
twelve dioceses in favor and four against him. 
That is about the proportion which has been 
kept up since the contest began, and may fairly 
be taken as prophetic of the final result. The 
extraordinary demand that the bishop-elect of 
Massachusetts shall answer certain questions as- 
sumed to bear upon his fitness for episcopal 
office looks like a last effort of despair on the 
part of Dr. Brooks' opponents. They seem to 
see the tide running so strongly in his direction 
that they are fain to resort to means which 
almost irresistibly remind us once more of the 
broom w 7 ith which " the excellent Mrs. Parting- 
ton " attempted to beat back the Atlantic Ocean 
at Sidmouth. 

Dr. Brooks is one of the most good-natured 
men alive. He is also one of the most compas- 
sionate. There is no doubt that he would be 



58 PHILLIPS BROOKS IN BOSTON 

only too glad to gratify the brethren who are in 
so sore a plight if he could properly do so. But 
he no doubt feels confident that even his most 
zealous adversaries will, when their calmness is 
restored, understand how entirely incompatible it 
would be with the dignity of his position to sub- 
mit to a course of catechising at this juncture. 
It would inevitably be construed by those who 
do not know him as an evidence of anxiety to 
curry favor and win votes. 

How absolutely unnecessary it is for him to go 
upon the witness-stand and undergo cross-exami- 
nation is perfectly plain to all concerned. If it 
is not plain to Bishop Perry and the rector of the 
Church of St. John the Evangelist in New York, 
the reason must be that those devout brethren 
have been so busy with other matters as to have 
failed to keep pace with the most significant 
developments in their own denomination. Dr. 
Brooks has been for many years the foremost 
preacher of the Protestant Episcopal Church in 
America. He has been heard in his own pulpit 
and other pulpits in many chief cities of the coun- 
try by uncounted thousands of eagerly listening 
auditors. He has preached and lectured exten- 
sively in Harvard and Yale, the leading Ameri- 



BISHOP PERRY S LETTER 59 

can universities. He has been a leading con- 
tributor to leading newspapers and magazines. 
Numerous published and widely read volumes 
contain his matured thoughts on living questions 
in church and society. There is no mystery 
whatever about his attitude toward the very mat- 
ters that he is asked to declare himself upon. 
He has declared himself once and again. Those, 
if there be such, who cannot understand what he 
has already said, could not understand what he 
might say. If what he has said needs explana- 
tion, any explanation would require to be ex- 
plained, and so on indefinitely. Moreover, if he 
once began to answer questions, where would he 
stop ? Every bishop and every member of every 
diocesan committee has an equal right to take 
a hand in the catechising. The whole idea is 
preposterous. It is irregular and uncanonical. 
There is provision made for examining by ques- 
tion and answer into the fitness of a theological 
student for ordination, but the rules of the 
Church recognize no such process for ascertain- 
ing the qualifications of a bishop-elect. 

It must be remembered that Phillips Brooks 
has not sought the office. The office has sought 
Phillips Brooks. He was elected on his record. 



60 PHILLIPS BROOKS IN BOSTON 

On that record his election will stand or fall. 
The question for the Protestant Episcopal 
Church in America is simply this, — whether or 
not it will avail itself of the most splendid oppor- 
tunity that has come in this generation for ad- 
vancing its interests and enhancing its honor. 
The fame and influence of the bishop-elect are 
beyond the reach of envy or bigotry. The epis- 
copal office cannot add anything thereto, but may 
receive much therefrom. 

There is one part of Bishop Perry's extraordi- 
nary letter, if possible, the most extraordinary of 
all. It is that part in which he seems to demand 
that Dr. Brooks give certain " assurances " and 
express certain " regrets." We forbear using in 
regard to this such plainness of speech as would 
find instant response in the hearts of thousands 
and tens of thousands who respect others be- 
cause they respect themselves. There may pos- 
sibly be clergymen who would renounce their 
convictions and repudiate their utterances for 
the sake of a bishopric, though we would not 
willingly believe it. We feel an assurance that, 
when Bishop Perry becomes acquainted with 
Bishop Brooks, the latter will receive from the 
former proper expressions of regret. 



bishops' vote next 6 1 

BISHOPS' VOTE NEXT. 

[June 6, 1 89 1.] 

The most universally interesting single item of 
news in yesterday's papers was that a majority 
of the standing committees, representing twenty- 
seven out of fifty-two dioceses of the Protestant 
Episcopal Church in the United States, had 
voted in favor of confirming Phillips Brooks' 
election as bishop of Massachusetts. There has 
never been another such instance of public inter- 
est in a matter of this kind. A good many peo- 
ple seem to be puzzled to understand why so 
very marked an exception is made in this case ; 
w T hy a question which can be decided only by a 
limited number of official votes, representing a 
single religious organization, is made to seem like 
a great public question dependent upon universal 
suffrage. Particularly does the share taken by 
leading metropolitan newspapers in the case 
perplex certain well-meaning folk. These folk 
hardly know whether to be glad or sorry, pleased 
or displeased ; but of one thing they are sure, and 
that is that they are surprised. 



62 PHILLIPS BROOKS IN BOSTON 

Yet it is all very plain. The public is widely 
interested in whatever is widely interesting. The 
choice of a denominational officer is commonly 
of no vital concern to the sect which makes the 
choice, and of none at all outside of that sect. 
This is true, whether the position to be filled 
is that of bishop in the Protestant Episcopal 
Church, presiding elder in the Methodist Epis- 
copal Church, president of the Presbyterian Gen- 
eral Assembly, moderator of a Congregational 
council, or any similar place. There is a certain 
ecclesiastical machinery to be kept in motion ; 
and provision must be duly made for attending 
to the wheels, cogs, belts, and shafting. Very 
often there is nothing that can be properly called 
election or selection. Five sentences exhaust 
the topic in discussion, and five lines are ample 
for the announcement of results. 

In the case of Phillips Brooks and the Massa- 
chusetts bishopric all this is changed. All sorts 
of reasons exist for the large space which the 
subject occupies in current speech and print. It 
is not merely the eminence, the pre-eminence, of 
the man. It is not the peculiarly influential 
character of the diocese. It is not the opposi- 
tion that has been aroused. It is not any excep- 



bishops' vote next 63 

tional acceptability of the bishop-elect's doctrinal 
views. These have something to do with it ; but 
not half so much as is imagined. There are far 
deeper, more potent reasons for the public inter- 
est. The election of Phillips Brooks to the bish- 
opric is of universal interest, because it signifies 
that positive rather than negative qualities are 
sought. It means that the man is to adorn the 
office, not the office the man. It means that par- 
tisanship is at a discount, and personality at a 
premium. It means that essentials are regarded 
more than incidentals. The general public care 
extremely little about distinctions of "High" and 
" Low " and " Broad " Church ; but it is closely 
touched by whatever affects the rights of free 
speech and untrammelled thought in Church or 
State. The questions at issue in this episcopal 
campaign are parallel with questions that are all 
the time at issue in every religious sect, every 
political party, every school of literature, art, or 
science, every line of life. Therefore, it is felt 
that the outcome of this contest will serve as a 
kind of mile-stone to mark the progress of man- 
kind along certain paths that lead to better 
things for us all. Looked at in this light, it is 
easy to see why the question of Phillips Brooks' 



64 PHILLIPS BROOKS IN BOSTON 

confirmation takes its place among the leading 
topics of the day, and especially why the fore- 
most daily newspapers give it reportorial and 
editorial prominence. 

It now remains for the bishops to add their 
sanction. It is to be taken for granted that this 
will not be long delayed. To suppose that any 
considerable number of them will try or desire to 
thwart the expressed wishes of the diocese of 
Massachusetts and of a majority of the standing 
committees representing dioceses throughout the 
country would be to do the reverend prelates 
great injustice. On the contrary, it is more 
courteous to them, and more reasonable, to 
assume that a large majority of the bishops 
will hasten to signify the pleasure with which 
they are prepared to welcome so noble an asso- 
ciate. 



IT WILL BE BISHOP BROOKS 65 



IT WILL BE BISHOP BROOKS. 

[July 13, 1891.] 

Congratulations to the bishops of the Protes- 
tant Episcopal Church in the L^nited States ! By 
their action in giving sanction to the choice of 
Phillips Brooks they have done the greatest pos- 
sible thing to enhance the esteem in which they 
are personally and officially held by Christian 
America. Henceforth it will be everywhere un- 
derstood that the foremost clergyman in each 
diocese is none too eminent for its titular head- 
ship. It will be presumed that the same princi- 
ples which governed the choice of a bishop in 
Massachusetts were applied when each of the 
other threescore elections to similar offices were 
held. If any one shall venture in the future to 
suggest that breadth of view, nobleness of spirit, 
true catholicity, are qualities conspicuous by 
their absence from the house of bishops, the as- 
persion will be instantly met by triumphant ref- 
erence to the splendid enthusiasm with which a 
man whose name is a synonyme for all these, 



66 PHILLIPS BROOKS IN BOSTON 

as well as for transcendent spiritual and mental 
gifts, was made a member of that house by all 
the authorities having responsibility in the mat- 
ter, including the reverend prelates whose asso- 
ciate he was to become. The bishops are to be 
congratulated, not only on the credit which will 
accrue from their affirmative votes, but on a 
happy escape from the very serious loss of pres- 
tige which a contrary course of action must have 
entailed. 

It is in order once again to point out how far 
removed the choice of Phillips Brooks to be 
bishop of Massachusetts is from a party victory. 
The Advertiser has from the first placed empha- 
sis upon this idea. His defeat would have meant 
the assertion of partisanship : his success means 
its rebuke. He stands for the Church and the 
whole Church, for the Church in the very truest 
and largest sense of the word. It is perhaps in- 
evitable that party questions must arise in con- 
nection with so vital a decision as that by which 
an episcopal vacancy is filled. There are three 
ways of meeting the issue. One is by drawing 
party lines and forcing the minority to the wall. 
The second is by evasion and compromise. The 
third is by rising above partisanship, and choos- 



IT WILL BE BISHOP BROOKS 67 

ing on grounds so high that lower motives are 
left out of sight. Who can doubt that the third 
way is the best ? Who that wishes well to the 
Church can fail to rejoice that the best way was 
adopted in this instance ? 

The long uncertainty is at last ended. The 
right, the wise, the fitting thing is assured. 
Nothing but the ceremonies of consecration re- 
main to be performed, in order that the man 
whom American Christianity delights to honor 
because he is an honor to American Christianity 
may take the place for which he is so eminently, 
so pre-eminently, fitted by nature and grace. 
Now may all that has marred the fraternity of re- 
ligious brotherhood be forgotten, and only that 
remembered of which the memory will serve to 
promote the interests which all worthy followers 
of the great head of the Universal Church have 
at heart. 



68 PHILLIPS BROOKS IN BOSTON 



"BISHOP OF MASSACHUSETTS." 
[July 18, 1891.] 

A gentleman residing in this city, who is well 
known among literary people, has written a per- 
sonal letter to the editor of the Advertiser, sug- 
gesting that, in view of the great public interest 
felt in the election and approaching confirmation 
of Phillips Brooks as bishop of the Protestant 
Episcopal Church in Massachusetts, it might be 
well to point out an error of expression which, 
for the sake of verbal exactness, should be 
avoided. Objection is taken to the term 
" Bishop of Massachusetts," on the ground that 
in a country which has no State Church there 
is and can be no such ecclesiastical functionary ; 
that, however proper in England may be the 
title, " Bishop of London," " Bishop of Dur- 
ham," " Bishop of Exeter," in America there is no 
" Bishop of Iowa," and the prelatical head of a 
particular Christian denomination in this Puritan 
Commonwealth, though he be never so honored 
and beloved by the people regardless of creed 



" BISHOP OF MASSACHUSETTS " 69 

or church, ought not to be styled " Bishop of 
Massachusetts." 

As a matter of strict accuracy, there is no dis- 
puting these propositions. Moreover, they re- 
late to a truth that every American citizen should 
fully understand, — a truth which may with great 
propriety be emphasized at this time, when pub- 
lic attention is likely to be more readily fixed 
upon it than would be possible ordinarily. The 
Advertiser has been careful to avoid giving coun- 
tenance to any mistake or confusion of the kind 
that our correspondent deprecates. In comment- 
ing on the auspicious outcome of the diocesan 
convention's vote for bishop, we said, in sub- 
stance, that by reason of his breadth of view and 
fellowship, which overleap all sectarian lines, yet 
with perfect loyalty to his own branch of the 
Universal Church, Phillips Brooks would not 
only be the bishop of the Protestant Episcopal 
Church in Massachusetts, but in some real and 
complete sense the bishop of Massachusetts. 
No reader could have failed to understand the 
purport of the closing expression as containing a 
careful distinction between an official bishopric 
and one that is wholly derived from personal 
worth, recognized by admiring affection. 



70 PHILLIPS BROOKS IN BOSTON 

It seems to us, nevertheless, that it may be 
possible to use the term in question without qual- 
ification, yet without confusion or real inexact- 
ness. It is a law of language, with which no one 
is better acquainted than our correspondent, that 
any term is limited in meaning by the known 
limits within which it is used. In speaking of 
the late gubernatorial convention in Ohio, we do 
not need always to specify w T h ether we mean the 
one that nominated Major McKinley or the one 
that renominated Governor Campbell. So "the 
Bishop of Massachusetts " might mean Bishop 
Williams of the Roman Catholic Church, and 
would be so understood if matters affecting that 
church were under discussion. In like manner 
any clergyman may be mentioned as pastor of 
the "church" in a particular locality, although, 
as a matter of fact, there are several churches 
there of as many denominations, "the church" 
being understood to signify the Baptist, Congre- 
gational, Methodist Episcopal, Protestant Epis- 
copal, or any other church, according to the 
known denominational relations of the clergy- 
man. 

There is the less danger of any misunder- 
standing with reference to the term " Bishop of 



"BISHOP OF MASSACHUSETTS " 7 I 

Massachusetts/' because he who is soon to be- 
come bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church 
of Massachusetts cannot even be imagined, by 
any one who knows him, as claiming the former 
title in any arrogant or exclusive sense. 



72 PHILLIPS BROOKS IN BOSTON 



PHILLIPS BROOKS' SERMON. 
[Oct. 12, 1891.] 

There was " standing-room only " in Trinity 
Church yesterday afternoon when the service 
opened at which the bishop-elect of the Protes- 
tant Episcopal Church of Massachusetts preached 
his last sermon as rector of the parish of which 
he has been the honored head for more than 
twenty years. The lowering clouds and fitful 
rain had no effect to deter the surging throngs 
who were eager for one more chance to listen to 
the words of life from those eloquent lips ere he 
whom they had so long known and loved as Phil- 
lips Brooks should become Bishop Brooks. 

It would be inexact to speak of the discourse 
as a "farewell sermon." The case was far differ- 
ent from that where a clergyman bids adieu to 
his people, and is about to go hence to assume 
toward another flock relations similar to those 
which are being severed. Although Trinity 
Church has displayed a noble unselfishness in 
giving up without protest a prize which any con- 



PHILLIPS BROOKS SERMON 73 

gregation of worshippers in the world might be 
proud to possess, yet it is not to be for a moment 
supposed that the sacrifice is at all such as would 
have been involved, had the society acquiesced 
in his acceptance of a "call" to another local 
pastorate. Boston will still be the great preach- 
er's home, and it cannot be, ought not to be, oth- 
erwise than that he will always recognize some 
special ties of love and service binding him to 
the place and people that have been so inti- 
mately connected with his life hitherto. It may 
have been on account of feeling this that no di- 
rect allusion was made yesterday afternoon to 
any approaching separation. At the same time 
there was a very marked and special significance 
in the tenderly solemn and affectionate words 
spoken in the pulpit, which can never again be 
exactly the same pulpit that it has been so long. 
The text itself was strikingly appropriate, 
being from the last chapter of the Book of Reve- 
lation, therefore among the final and farewell 
words of the Bible : " And the Spirit and the 
Bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, 
Come. And let him that is athirst come. And 
whosoever will, let him take the water of life 
freely." 



74 PHILLIPS BROOKS IN BOSTON 

To those who are acquainted with Phillips 
Brooks' fundamental conceptions of Christian 
truth, and who had the inestimable privilege of 
listening to this sermon, it must have been evi- 
dent that the preacher designed to sum up once 
more, in simple, earnest, impassioned pleadings, 
the lessons which it has been the task of his min- 
istry to teach. Beginning with a reference to 
the element of finality in the text, a recognition 
of the words as containing a farewell, the preacher 
called attention to the fact that they point on- 
ward and upward. They are full of the future. 
The better, brighter, broader day that must come 
for the Church, for the world, and for each human 
life that attains its true destiny, was the thought 
set forth, under that head, as only such a theme 
can be set forth by such a man. 

Then, as the culminating message, came the 
doctrine which constitutes the central sun of 
Phillips Brooks' preaching, of which he never 
tires, of which his hearers never tire, of which, 
we may be rejoicingly sure, the people in the 
larger ministry upon which he is about to enter 
will never tire, — the doctrine that Christianity, in 
its heart of hearts, is not a creed, not a cere- 
mony, not a law, but is a person, is the living, 



PHILLIPS BROOKS SERMON 75 

loving, present person, who was born in Bethle- 
hem, died on Calvary, and is never very far from 
every one of us. It is such teaching as this 
which the world needs, and which will, without a 
doubt, make the ministry of Bishop Brooks even 
more fruitful, if that be possible, than the minis- 
try of Phillips Brooks has been. 



76 PHILLIPS BROOKS IN BOSTON 



BISHOP BROOKS' CONSECRATION. 
[Oct. 15, 1891.] 

Regarding the solemnly impressive yet joy- 
inspiring services in Trinity Church yesterday 
morning it is not possible for any human lan- 
guage to express adequately the thoughts and 
emotions that rise in uncounted multitudes of 
deeply stirred hearts. The elaborate ceremonial 
was all that it could be ; moving on from first to 
last in simple grandeur according to the order of 
the church for such occasions made and pro- 
vided. The place of consecration was itself an 
essential element, contributing no small share to 
the sacred splendors of the scene. We do not 
mean merely that the edifice within whose walls 
Phillips Brooks received the vestments of a 
bishop was of all churches in this Commonwealth 
most fitting by reason of its architectural magnifi- 
cence, though that is true. But the rudest taber- 
nacle ever constructed out of rough-hewn timbers 
would have been hardly less fit if it had been, as 
Trinity Church has been, the meeting-place for 



BISHOP BROOKS CONSECRATION 77 

many a year of hungry throngs to whom our peer- 
less preacher was wont to break the bread of 
life. Nothing was absent that could give dignity 
and grace and memorableness, — neither pulpit 
oratory, nor appropriate music, nor stately pag- 
eantry, nor presence of distinguished men, nor 
participation of eminent prelates, nor long lines 
of white-robed priests, nor an audience rapt in 
eager attentiveness, limited in numbers only by 
the inexorable limitations of space. Yet this 
was not all. There were few, if any, who yester- 
day had the never-to-be-forgotten privilege of 
witnessing the spectacle beneath the majestic 
tower of Trinity who did not realize that the vast 
and sympathetic assemblage gathered there was 
but an infinitesimal fraction of the mighty mass 
of people outside who were there in spirit, who 
would seize the earliest opportunity to read of 
what had there taken place, and whose souls 
would unite in response to the voices that said 
" Amen ! " when divine blessings were invoked 
upon the newly made bishop. 

No one in the American Church could have 
been chosen more suitable than Bishop Potter of 
New York for the great office of preacher at such 
a time. As yet the title of archbishop is un- 



78 PHILLIPS BROOKS IN BOSTON 

known to the Protestant Episcopal denomination 
on this side the ocean. Whether it is well that 
this is so has been questioned of late. Opinion 
differs as to that ; but it is probable that no one 
would dispute the statement that, if yesterday 
morning the suffrages of the Church could have 
been taken as to the one among all living mem- 
bers of the episcopate best entitled by learning 
and by gifts of nature and grace to be chosen to 
exercise arch-episcopal functions, a majority of 
ballots would have been cast for Henry C. Pot- 
ter. If such a vote were to be taken to-day, and 
should result otherwise, it could only be for the 
reason that another great name has been added 
to the roll of the house of bishops. The dis- 
course preached from Trinity pulpit yesterday 
was throughout worthy of the preacher and the 
occasion. It was logical, eloquent, and scholarly. 
It was such as the whole country has learned to 
expect from Bishop Potter. It was loyal to the 
Church of which the prelate is a distinguished 
ornament, at the same time that it was catholic 
in recognition of the Church Universal. But we 
do not in the least disparage other portions when 
we say that the crowning interest of the sermon 
attaches to that portion which was devoted to 



BISHOP BROOKS CONSECRATION 79 

the personality toward which all hearts turned. 
They were brave, strong, generous, tender, noble 
words of welcome that the great bishop ad- 
dressed to the great bishop-elect. Their bearing 
is not confined to their immediate application. 
They contain truths which the whole Protestant 
Episcopal Church will do well to heed and re- 
member. If, together with a fervent personal 
tribute to the pre-eminent worthiness of the indi- 
vidual, to whom they were addressed, to hold the 
highest office in the gift of the Church, there was 
mingled something of indignant rebuke of the 
spirit that would have forbidden the Church to 
choose for one of its bishops " the man who has 
the widest vision and the largest love," who can 
deny, remembering what we would all fain for- 
get, that the rebuke was needed ? For the honor 
of the Church let us hope that a similar rebuke 
will never be needed again. The universal in- 
terest that has for months been felt in the elec- 
tion, confirmation, and now in the consecration 
of Phillips Brooks to be bishop of the Protestant 
Episcopal diocese of Massachusetts, is something 
phenomenal. Vv T e need not wonder that it causes 
wonder. It is indeed wonderful. Nothing like 
it was ever known in America before. The topic 



80 PHILLIPS BROOKS IN BOSTON 

rivals in the public mind all other current themes. 
An exciting political campaign is not more talked 
about, certainly not among thoughtful citizens. 
Foreign news, big with the fate of governments 
and touching on problems of war and peace 
among nations, stirs not intelligent readers more 
profoundly. Whoever would understand this 
phenomenon must look for reasons beyond all 
sectarian lines and all ordinary personal factors. 
It is because Phillips Brooks that was, the 
Bishop Brooks that is and is to be, has endeared 
himself to a circle wider than any denomination, 
than all denominations. What the preacher in- 
dicated yesterday is true. We honor him who is 
consecrated, not chiefly for his eloquence, his 
learning, his achievements as pastor of a great 
church, or even for his noble services as a fore- 
most citizen, ready to speak potent words on be- 
half of every worthy cause within the city and 
the Commonwealth. It would come nearer the 
secret to say that it is his Christian character, 
tried by many tests and never found wanting, 
that commands our homage. But something 
more must be said before the story is told. 

Bishop Brooks occupies a place in the hearts 
of men that can only be described by using the 



BISHOP BROOKS' CONSECRATION 8 1 

word " gratitude.'' He has done for tens of thou- 
sands an inestimable service. He has taught us, 
not only how to die, but how to live. He has 
unravelled for us the solemn mysteries of man's 
mission " on this bank and shoal of time." He 
has made the fatherhood of God seem real. He 
has made religion seem a privilege, and daily 
communion with divine nature a possibility. He 
has helped us to believe in better things than we 
had known before. He has touched hidden and 
unsuspected springs of high ambition. Life, to 
uncounted multitudes, appears more worth living 
because of the instruction, the inspiration, the 
example of him whom henceforth we shall delight 
to call Bishop Brooks. Therefore, we unfeign- 
edly thank him, and rejoice with all those who 
do rejoice in the consecration to the bishopric 
of this already consecrated man. 



82 PHILLIPS BROOKS IN BOSTON 



HELEN KELLER'S THOUGHT OF GOD* 
[Jan. 7, 1892.] 

The story which we publish this morning of 
how little Helen Keller, the blind child whose 
education at the Perkins Institute has attracted 
— and rewarded — so much notice, came to a 
knowledge of God, is one of the sweetest and 
sublimest narratives ever brought out in this 
world. Whatever our readers neglect in to-day's 
Advertiser, we hope none of them will fail to read 
this story. For old and young, for religious and 
irreligious people alike, it is exceedingly valuable. 
And to say that it is interesting is but a feeble 
statement. It is of absorbing interest. Indeed, 
so touching, tender and thrilling, so full of new 
light on a problem that never grows old is it, that 
we have little fear that any one who begins to 
read will cease before reaching the last word. 

Helen Keller's experience is a revelation in 
child-nature. It shows that, even under condi- 
tions of apparently supreme difficulty, and when 

* See Appendix, 



helen Keller's thought of god 8$ 

left almost alone to the humanly unaided struggles 
of her own mind and heart after infinite truth, this 
little blind girl reached a crisis where the hunger 
for knowledge concerning God prompted her to 
call on the dearest friends she knew to teach her. 
It is but a little while since a good deal was said 
in Boston about the trial of an experiment to find 
out whether or not elementary religious ideas are 
in any sense innate. It would seem as though 
such a question need no longer be asked. 

It is occasion for rejoicing that the first in- 
struction that she was able to comprehend, in re- 
ligious doctrine, was given by one so wise and in 
every way fit for the heavenly task as Bishop 
Phillips Brooks. Would that every child — yea, 
and every grown person, too — might be taught 
by him that creed, which is better than all the 
churches' confessions and catechisms, " God is 
love " ! 



84 PHILLIPS BROOKS IN BOSTON 



CHRIST IN BOSTON. 
[March 15, 1892.] 

One of the most striking passages in Bishop 
Brooks' Lenten lecture in St. Paul's Church yes- 
terday was the eloquent picture of the effect that 
might be expected to result from a bodily visit of 
the Lord Jesus Christ to Boston. The theme is 
a familiar one. Preachers and newspapers often 
attempt such a picture, but they generally repre- 
sent the people as indifferent or scornful toward 
the wonderful visitant. Phillips Brooks takes a 
much wiser view. He thinks that, if Jesus were 
to walk down State Street or enter an abode of 
wealth and fashion on Beacon Hill, a hush would 
instantly fall upon the noisy scenes of specula- 
tion, a sense of uplifting presence would come to 
gay throngs, men would want to stop their base 
dealings, women would become ashamed of their 
frivolous lives. And, when we come to think 
of it, is not this the more reasonable picture? 
Something very like that was what took place in 
the first century in Jerusalem. Surely, after the 



CHRIST IN BOSTON 85 

lapse of eighteen hundred years, during which 
the Christ-idea has been working in the world, it 
might fairly be expected that at least an equal 
welcome would await the world's spiritual Master 
if he were to make a visible appearance in the 
nineteenth century in Boston. 



86 PHILLIPS BROOKS IN BOSTON 



REACHING THE MASSES. 
. [Nov. 12, 1892.] 

It is a fundamental error to think that he who 
would raise the fallen must put himself upon 
their level in language, in dress, or in deport- 
ment. A few years ago Phillips Brooks preached 
a series of sermons in Faneuil Hall on Sunday 
evenings, and was heard by throngs of such peo- 
ple as the Christian Workers' Convention leaders 
are trying to reach. He did not let himself 
down : he did draw them up. His Faneuil Hall 
sermons were in style and every other essential 
respect similar to his Trinity Church sermons. 
Yet he was heard by one audience as attentively 
as by the other. A still greater example can be 
cited. There was once a preacher in Jerusalem 
who did city missionary work, whom beggars and 
lepers and thieves and women who were sinners 
crowded to hear, whose converts were mainly 
poor, who scarcely numbered a single member of 
the city's four hundred among his parishioners. 
But he never mistook levelling down for levelling 



REACHING THE MASSES 87 

up. He was the most perfect gentleman that 
ever lived. He was as full of dignity as of sym- 
pathy and gentleness. He did not talk slang. 
And "the common people heard him gladly." 



88 PHILLIPS BROOKS IN BOSTON 



THE GREAT GRIEF. 

[Jan. 24, 1893.] 

The first and strongest impression produced 
on countless multitudes of people yesterday when 
they received the startling tidings of Bishop 
Brooks' death was one of personal sorrow, in- 
tensified by the terrible shock that its entire unex- 
pectedness caused. It is not possible to put into 
words the depth and strength of this feeling. It 
is an experience that seldom comes to a commu- 
nity, for the men are extremely rare who can 
inspire it. Very often, indeed, the death of a 
famous, honored and influential citizen becomes 
the chief topic for a time in extended circles, he 
is sincerely lamented and his loss is profoundly 
realized. But nearly always, in such a case, the 
sense of personal bereavement is confined within 
limits vastly narrower than circumscribe the rec- 
ognition of distinguished and departed worth. 
The extraordinary individual for whom we mourn 
at this time was gifted even more wonderfully 
with the qualities that inspire reverent affection 



THE GREAT GRIEF 89 

than with those other characteristics that he pos- 
sessed in no common measure, yet shared with 
mental and moral greatness wherever found. 
This death has brought heart-ache to more lives 
than he who was so humble amid his clustering 
honors can ever have anticipated, to more lives 
than any one but the recording angel can enu- 
merate. 

It is at this point that so many attempts to ex- 
plain the secret of his power over human kind 
break down. The bottom of the mystery lies in 
the perfect confidence which men and women 
and children felt in his goodness. That last 
word seems inadequate, merely because it is so 
often used as the antithesis of greatness, where- 
as, in describing Phillips Brooks, the two words 
belong together. No one could separate them 
without failing to express the truth. The man 
was good and great, great and good ; but the im- 
pression produced by a slight knowledge of him, 
and increased with increasing knowledge that 
has been growing with the growth of his years 
and widening of his influence, is that his good- 
ness was the rarer and more precious quality of 
the two. The predominant impulse that Phil- 
lips Brooks awakened was not to admire his bril- 



90 PHILLIPS BROOKS IN BOSTON 

liant talents. It was a longing to become a par- 
taker in his lofty faith and to pattern after his 
superb character. 

Probably there never was an example of elo- 
quence, whether displayed in the pulpit, at the 
bar, on the lecture-platform, or in legislative 
halls, that was at once more universally acknowl- 
edged or more difficult to account for than that 
of the ex-rector of Trinity Church. Certainly he 
displayed few of the usual resources of oratory. 
His vocal defects were marked and at times 
painful to himself and to his auditors. His lan- 
guage was hardly ever ornate. In the sense in 
which the phrase is commonly used, he was not a 
" prose poet." He made very sparing use of " il- 
lustrations " drawn either from external Nature 
or from history, literature, or art ; though his oc- 
casional metaphors were surprisingly apt, pure 
gems in perfect setting. There were seldom pas- 
sages in his sermons that were of such excep- 
tional brilliancy as to stand out in memory apart 
from the body of the discourse. In that as in 
many other respects he differed from the great 
preacher with whom alone of modern American 
pulpiteers he can be compared, the late Henry 
Ward Beecher. Hence Bishop Brooks' elo- 



THE GREAT GRIEF 9 1 

quence endures less than that of most famous 
orators the test of brief extracts. " The Beau- 
ties of Ruskin " is the title given to a book of se- 
lections that does no injustice to the great critic, 
but any attempt to exhibit the genius of Bishop 
Brooks by such a method can never be suc- 
cessful. 

His eloquence consists in matter rather than 
manner. It has been said, "The style is the 
man." This is not true in the instance now 
under consideration. Instead we must say, 
"The man was the style." The whole man — 
body, brain, and soul — was eloquent. Words, 
thoughts, emotions, tones, the towering and elec- 
trifying physical presence, the great, deep-set, 
flashing eyes, the moral majesty back of every- 
thing, — it was the combination of all these things 
that made up the sum of the eloquence that 
stirred and swayed vast audiences. 

Great orators, poets in prose or verse, have 
generally depended largely upon the spell 
wrought by word-picturings of the sublime and 
beautiful in Nature ; by presenting to the mind's 
eye stars, flowers, forests, mountains, limpid 
streams, cataracts, the ocean in storm and calm. 
Phillips Brooks knew the human soul as Thoreau 



92 PHILLIPS BROOKS IN BOSTON 

knew the New England woods, and Tennyson the 
castle walls of Old England. He revealed the 
wonderland of love. He painted to throbbing 
hearts the aspirations of mortals for immortality. 
He bade men look up and look forth at the dig- 
nity and the worth of human life. He was elo- 
quent in portrayal of forgotten possibilities. 
Common thoughts, familiar truths, old doctrines 
worn threadbare by ages of stereotyped repeti- 
tion, passing through the alembic of his great 
soul, emerged in splendor; and men and women 
of the world, grown callous by worldliness, were 
strangely moved at hearing anew from his lips 
the gospel story that they had learned at their 
■mother's knee, but had well-nigh forgotten for 
many and many a year. 

There was one feature of Dr. Brooks' preach- 
ing that was especially characteristic, and that 
can be more clearly denned than some others. 
We allude to his constant habit of philosophi- 
cal analysis. The very word " analysis " seems 
to suggest something " dry," formal, scholastic; 
more suitable for the college lecture-room than 
for the pulpit. But his analysis was as unlike 
common men's as was all else that he was or 
did. It would be worth the pains for any one 



THE GREAT GRIEF 93 

who is desirous to learn the secret of his power 
to study this feature. Everybody who heard him 
was wont to exclaim upon the " freshness " with 
which familiar ideas were set forth. Very often 
that consisted in showing how what seems to be 
simple is really complex ; how unity is full of va- 
riety; how a moss-grown trunk of truth is but 
the beginning and basis of a noble tree that 
reaches toward heaven, that stretches its giant 
arms far and wide, that is beautiful with foliage 
and bountiful in fruitage, and in whose branches 
the birds of the air lodge and sing. 

Phillips Brooks was one of the most accom- 
plished of scholars. The multitude did not fully 
appreciate this fact, for the reason that he made 
no display of his rich resources. Pedantry was 
his abomination. People did not think of calling 
him a learned man. Yet there was no field of in- 
tellectual cultivation to which he was a stranger. 
His culture was of the finest, his tastes of the 
purest. " No man can do much for others who 
is not much himself/' was a maxim he laid down 
in his " Lyman Beecher Lectures " before the 
divinity students of Yale College, sixteen years 
ago. That maxim supplies the key to one treas- 
ure-chamber of his career. He was much him- 



94 PHILLIPS BROOKS IN BOSTON 

self ; and by a lifetime of the highest study, for 
which he found or made leisure in the midst of 
incessant public activities, he was always adding 
to his marvellous store of the best knowledge. 

The influence which he exerted in Boston, the 
city of his love, the city where the greatest por- 
tion of his active life was spent and his career 
culminated and concluded, was something of 
which it would hardly be possible to speak in 
exaggerated terms. Since the death of Wendell 
Phillips no citizen of our city has been so pre- 
eminently its representative, unless we except 
Oliver Wendell Holmes and Edward Everett 
Hale. Certainly, no orator whosoever has in 
these later years been so eagerly heard by our 
people at home, or has uttered with such com- 
manding effect the city's noblest thought abroad. 
His position in Boston suggests comparison with 
that of Savonarola in Florence, of Luther in Wit- 
tenberg, of Calvin in Geneva, and of Bossuet in 
Paris. But, for the most striking parallel, we 
must revert to the history of the fourth Christian 
century, and recall the name and fame of Chrysos- 
tom, "the golden-mouth," Bishop of Constanti- 
nople. 



A TEACHER OF THEOLOGY 95 



A TEACHER OF THEOLOGY. 



There are so many lessons to be learned from 
Phillips Brooks' life that some of the most useful 
of them are in danger of being overlooked at this 
time when impressions concerning that wonder- 
ful man are, to an exceptional extent, undergoing 
the creative and recreative process. Among the 
many appreciative tributes which appeared in the 
newspapers, yesterday, there was a notable lack, 
so far as our observation reached, of any ade- 
quate recognition of his influence as a theolog- 
ical teacher. This omission is not strange. He 
was almost as far as possible from being a theo- 
logian in the accepted sense of the term. It is 
questionable whether, in the whole course of his 
ministry, he ever preached what is called a doc- 
trinal sermon. It is certain that he never en- 
tered the lists of theological disputation either 
as an author of books or a writer of polemical 
essays for magazines and church periodicals. It 
is quite likely that some intelligent people, who 



96 PHILLIPS BROOKS IN BOSTON 

often heard him preach, would not be able to-day 
to give even a brief outline of his opinions on 
the doctrinal questions most debated at the pres- 
ent time. It is more than quite likely that one 
might have heard him preach a score of times 
without being able to gain from the sermons 
themselves so much as a hint as to whether Dr. 
Brooks was an Episcopalian, a Congregationalist, 
a Baptist, or member of some other Christian 
sect. Yet no preacher was ever more positive 
in conviction or courageous in utterance. 

Furthermore, those who are in a position to 
judge from the inside as well as the outside have 
long realized that the extraordinary man for 
whom English - speaking Christendom mourns 
was making an impress upon the doctrinal 
thought of the closing years of the century that 
could not fail to powerfully affect the trend of 
creed-revision in the twentieth century. The 
masses of people failed to perceive this, except 
possibly in a vague way, because they were so ac- 
customed to hear theological discussions carried 
on by the processes of attack and defence, of 
assertion and denial, of arguments pro and con. 
Here was a man who never argued, though he 
was forever reasoning ; who was positive without 



A TEACHER OF THEOLOGY 97 

being pugnacious ; whose sermons were richly 
Biblical, but were free from "proof-texts.'' So 
people scarcely thought of him as a leader of cre- 
dal movements. Perhaps no one feature of Dr. 
Brooks' remarkable career is more instructive 
than this, — the way he taught people more rea- 
sonable and Christ-like doctrines than narrower 
teachers had formulated, yet never seemed to be 
at all concerned with controversial theology. 

His method was to put the new truth in place 
of the old error; and, without making any fuss 
about it, without turning aside from his main 
work by one hair's breadth to answer objections 
or win consent, just to go on and use the new 
truth for religious purposes, and use it so vig- 
orously, so luminously, with such inspiring spir- 
ituality, that everybody who noticed the absence 
of the old idea would feel how very much better 
the new was. 

A single instance will illustrate our meaning. 
A number of years ago Phillips Brooks delivered, 
during the Lenten season, a series of Friday- 
afternoon lectures in Trinity Church on the 
Psalms of David. One day he took up what are 
known as "the imprecatory psalms," — those in 
which King David calls upon God to send down 



gS PHILLIPS BROOKS IN BOSTON 

all manner of evils upon the king's enemies, and 
even upon their little children. The question of 
how these psalms ought to be regarded is one 
that has long troubled devout people. Of course, 
the traditional view is that David was inspired 
from Heaven to utter these dreadful imprecations, 
and that somehow we must believe that they just 
as truly express the divine mind as does Christ's 
prayer upon the cross for his murderers, " Father, 
forgive them, for they know not what they do." 
But many and many a tender, loving, worshipping 
heart has found that interpretation a terrible 
stumbling-block. The rector of Trinity did not 
waste a word in arguing against the old view : he 
simply alluded to it as one that stood in the way 
of faith, then described the imprecatory psalms 
as specimens, which God had preserved for man- 
kind's instruction, of the horrible wickedness 
into which even a worshipper of God, a man who 
tried to be a servant of God, was liable to fall if 
he did not watch and pray against his besetting 
temptation. Moreover, the preacher used these 
psalms as a most striking illustration of the ele- 
mentary stage in religious character that the 
best of the patriarchs and other Old Testament 
worthies had been able to reach without a knowl- 



A TEACHER OF THEOLOGY 99 

edge of Christ, contrasting that with the im- 
measurably loftier plane set before us in the New 
Testament. 

Thus a portion of Scripture that by false in- 
terpretation had been made a sore hindrance to 
faith was by a truer interpretation rendered beau- 
tiful and helpful. At the same time a vitally im- 
portant principle of Scriptural exegesis was intro- 
duced,— a principle that is closely connected with 
some of the questions at issue in the Andover 
case and the Briggs case. Leaders of progres- 
sive religious thought can learn a great deal by 
closely studying the methods of the great Broad 
Churchman, whose loss all kinds of churchmen 
and Christians of every name deplore. 



IOO PHILLIPS BROOKS IN BOSTON 



THE LAST OF EARTH. 

[Jan. 27, 1893.] 

Yesterday Boston witnessed and participated 
in the greatest, most impressive, most instructive 
funeral-service that this city has known for many 
and many a year. No description can do justice 
to its solemn grandeur, no teachings adequately 
unfold its deep and lofty lessons. Our people 
are not unfamiliar with the pageantry of c< obse- 
quious sorrow." Sometimes they have seen high 
civic officials committed to their last resting- 
place, accompanied by whatever stately ceremo- 
nials can testify to the appreciation of public 
worth, and give dignity to the sad honors which 
the living pay to the memory of the dead. Again 
they have been spectators of the majestic rites 
with which illustrious soldiers are laid away in 
the tomb where silence and eternal peace take 
the place of war's alarms. He, whom Boston 
buried yesterday, was neither statesman nor mil- 
itary commander. He had held no civic office, 
had achieved no material glory. He was a sim- 



i 



THE LAST OF EARTH IOI 

pie citizen of the nation, the Commonwealth, and 
the city; in that respect no more or less than 
each of the thousands upon thousands who gath- 
ered in the beautiful temple so closely associated 
with his name, or thronged in the spacious square 
in front, in order that, if it were possible, they 
might gain one more glimpse of that beloved 
face, or, failing in that, join their voices in the 
hymn to be sung out of doors, — "O God, our 
help in ages past ! " — and bow their heads and 
weep when the great preacher should pass for 
the last time out of the sanctuary, whose conse- 
crated walls had so often echoed to the sound of 
his voice in sermon and in prayer. He was only 
a citizen, as were the countless multitudes who, 
compelled by the day's duties to remain away 
from those sacred scenes, no less sincerely 
mourned an irreparable loss. 

The sublimity of the tribute paid by the peo- 
ple of Boston to the memory of Phillips Brooks 
was in its simplicity. That is true of the tribute 
which is true of him in whose honor it was ren- 
dered. And the circumstances show how safe and 
wise a thing it is to heed the throbbings of the 
popular heart, when stirred by grand impulses. 
It was the people who were quickest to discern 



102 PHILLIPS BROOKS IN BOSTON 

the incomparable worth of Phillips Brooks. They 
knew him, flocked to him, loved and trusted him. 
A good deal was said a couple of years ago about 
the public voice that almost with one accord 
named him as the proper successor to the 
lamented Bishop Paddock. Something was now 
and then said in ecclesiastical and sacerdotal 
quarters in a tone of impatience, even of resent- 
ment, regarding this public voice, especially as 
it found utterance in the newspapers. As though 
the question, being exclusively one for a single 
sect, if not a section of a sect, to decide, any ex- 
pression of the popular mind about it was little 
less than an impertinence ! Later it was reproach- 
fully asserted that the miscellaneous people, and 
especially their exponents, the newspapers, had 
made Phillips Brooks bishop. There was a cer- 
tain measure, greater or less, of truth in this. 
Yet from the hour of his consecration there 
began to be but one mind as to the supreme wis- 
dom of the choice, and before untimely death cut 
him down this union of sentiment had grown to 
unanimity almost, if not altogether, complete. 
The people's judgment, obedient to their inspired 
heart, was right. 

It cannot be too clearly understood that one 



THE LAST OF EARTH 1 03 

main cause of the unprecedented enthusiasm for 
Bishop Brooks was his breadth of Christian com- 
prehensiveness. All his other splendid qualities 
would not have sufficed so to endear him to the 
public without this one. The universal heart 
went forth to him because he consistently and 
constantly declared that Christ is the head of the 
universal church, and that every organized body 
of worshipping believers, by whatever name 
called, has an equal right with any other to claim 
to be a part of the Church. It would be a most 
portentous mistake to interpret yesterday's events 
as a token of popular trend toward the exaltation 
of one sect at the expense of others. They afford 
the strongest possible rebuke to any such idea. 
At the same time it is unquestionable that the 
special branch of the Church to which the de- 
parted prelate was attached, and to which he was 
always devoted with special affection and unwav- 
ering loyalty, has been brought through his influ- 
ence into closer touch with " all sorts and condi- 
tions of men," has won a stronger hold on the 
community than could have been secured through 
any other human agency. Herein is a lesson 
that " churchmen " cannot heed too diligently. 
It is not by narrowness, but by breadth, not by ex- 



104 PHILLIPS BROOKS IN BOSTON 

elusive pretensions, but by the largest fellowship, 
that the representatives of any denomination 
can best promote its growth and extend its 
power. 

There is reason for rejoicing that Phillips 
Brooks was so entirely a preacher of the gospel. 
Otherwise there might be a chance to misunder- 
stand yesterday's marvellous homage. Rarely, 
in our generation, has a famous clergyman so 
completely illustrated the apostolic words, " This 
one thing I do." Some distinguished preachers 
have been prominent in political discussions, 
others in literature, some in temperance or educa- 
tional reform : still others have won fame as sci- 
entists or platform lecturers. We are not find- 
ing fault with them. Oftentimes their usefulness 
in extra-religious lines has been such as to fully 
justify their multiform activity. But no one will 
dare to say, it seems to us, that the prince of 
preachers who rests in the new-made grave at 
Mount Auburn could have done the world more 
good if he had done anything else than minister 
in divine things to the souls of his fellow-men. 
And now there is no opportunity to minimize the 
significance of the demonstration that has been 
made of the people's love for him. It was the 



THE LAST OF EARTH 105 

preacher of the gospel whom they honored. It 
was the living link between the invisible and 
the visible world for whom they sorrowed because 
they should see his face no more. Here in Bos- 
ton, in this seat of science and philosophy, this 
alleged home of agnosticism, this mart of trade, 
this city that abounds in temples erected to Mam- 
mon, at whose altars high-priests of finance are 
said to offer sacrifices to a golden calf, here it has 
been proved that the man whom the citizens of 
the city most delight to honor is he who taught 
them that none of these things are worthy to be 
compared with the things that are spiritually dis- 
cerned. 

Once more, let no mistake be made in the in- 
terpretation of these great events. If worldliness 
needs the caution, so does religiousness no less. 
Bishop Brooks could never have been what he 
was, or been followed and trusted and loved as 
he was and is and is to be, but for his wonderful 
wisdom in bridging the gulf that too often sep- 
arates the churches from the masses ; and by the 
word " masses " we mean to designate rich people 
as well as poor, learned as well as illiterate, the 
Back Bay and the North End, " Harvard College 
and the slums." He taught us all how to discrim- 



106 PHILLIPS BROOKS IN BOSTON 

in ate between the letter which killeth and the 
spirit that maketh alive. He showed us the es- 
sential essence of Christianity in distinction from 
the man-made creeds that cluster around and 
sometimes half conceal it. 

About a dozen years ago Phillips Brooks de- 
livered in Philadelphia, afterward repeating them 
at Yale College and perhaps elsewhere, a series 
of lectures, soon rendered accessible in book- 
form, on the "Influence of Jesus." Of all his 
published volumes this has probably done most to 
make the English-speaking world acquainted with 
his conception of religious truth. In the opening 
lecture he stated that conception to be " the 
fatherhood of God and the childhood of every 
man to him." The preacher remarked that it was 
no part of his design to prove the correctness of 
this conception, for he could not understand how it 
was possible for any one to study the Gospels and 
remain in doubt that to reveal this truth was the 
purpose of Jesus Christ in coming into the world. 
"Yet," said Dr. Brooks, "if any man were in 
doubt, I should only ask him to open the New 
Testament with me at four most solemn places." 
Then he cited the story beginning, "A certain 
man had two sons " ; the prayer in which the dis- 



THE LAST OF EARTH 107 

ciples were taught to say, "Our Father which 
art in heaven " ; the post-resurrection promise, 
"I ascend unto my Father and your Father"; 
and the declaration made long afterward, "by 
that disciple who knew him best and loved 
him most," "As many as received him, to 
them gave he power to become the sons 
of God." The fatherhood of God and the 
childhood of every man to him, that is what 
Phillips Brooks conceived the truth to be which 
men need to learn. When the Church is ready 
to teach that, the world is ready to be taught. 
And the lesson will evermore seem easier to un- 
derstand by reason of the noble, tender, faithful, 
unselfish, incomparable life that has been lived 
among us and that abides with us still, though 
the majestic form in which it was tabernacled has 
gene from the city of the living to the city of the 
dead. 



108 PHILLIPS BROOKS IN BOSTON 



THE BISHOP OF BOSTON. 
[Jan. 31, 1893.] 

Among all the tributes paid in public speech 
in memory of Phillips Brooks within these past 
eight days of sorrow, spontaneous, splendid, and 
numberless as have been those tributes, none can 
have exceeded in significance those uttered yes- 
terday afternoon at the meeting of clergymen of 
all denominations held in the historic Old South 
Church on Washington Street. Everything about 
that meeting was notable. The edifice was filled 
to overflowing. The audience was wrought up 
to the highest pitch of reverent, tender, tearful, 
loving enthusiasm. The various addresses were 
such as the occasion demanded. There was elo- 
quence in the spoken words, greater eloquence 
in the silent spectacle that presented itself before 
any voice was lifted up. Two thoughts were in 
all hearts, two themes on every speaking tongue. 
The first was that the great preacher had been 
the shepherd and bishop of every soul in Boston. 



THE BISHOP OF BOSTON 109 

The second was that his death made visible what 
his life was spent in rendering possible, — the 
essential unity, despite all diversity, of the Church 
of Christ which is in Boston. 



IIO PHILLIPS BROOKS IN BOSTON 



PHILLIPS BROOKS AT HARVARD. 

[Friday, Feb. 17, 1893.] 

The proposal to erect at Harvard University a 
memorial building in honor of Phillips Brooks is 
one which the friends of Harvard and of the 
great preacher-bishop — and who does not come 
under one designation or the other or both ? — 
ought to adopt with such generous enthusiasm as 
will insure its speedy success. No one of the 
many plans suggested for commemorating this 
wonderful man, for expressing the gratitude uni- 
versally felt toward him, and for perpetuating his 
visible influence, is more worthy. 

His relations to Harvard were as remarkable 
as any single feature of his career, excepting only 
what he was in, and did for, Trinity Church. Out- 
side of Trinity's pulpit the rector was more con- 
stantly and closely identified with the university 
at Cambridge than with any other institution or 
line of work. If ever there was a loyal son of an 
Alma Mater, Phillips Brooks was such a son of 
Harvard. His filial devotion was nothing less 



PHILLIPS BROOKS AT HARVARD III 

than sublime. His utmost wealth of mind and 
heart was poured out there unstintedly almost 
from the day of his matriculation to the day of 
his death. His classmates never tire of recount- 
ing to one another, and to a public never weary 
of hearing, those youthful signs of coming distinc- 
tion that were fulfilled a hundred-fold. In mature 
and later life he loved to go back there as dearly, 
if possible, as the faculty, the students, and on all 
anniversary occasions the alumni loved to have 
him come. The mere announcement of his ex- 
pected presence was enough to awaken eager in- 
terest in every appointed occasion. Whenever 
he came, he brought light and heat, the sunshine 
of his marvellous nature. Harvard has many 
grand men ready at all times to do her what ser- 
vice they may. Some are there all the while, 
others return at her call from near and from far. 
But there was none other among her mighty ones 
who could do for the foremost American seat of 
learning w r hat Phillips Brooks could do, and did. 
His special relations to the university as an 
alumnus, the more intimate identification of his 
life with hers, may be said to have dated from 
the time, not a great many years ago, when those 
far-reaching changes were taking place at Har- 



112 PHILLIPS BROOKS IN BOSTON 

vard which mark the most modern period, — 
changes in plans of study looking to a develop- 
ment of the elective system previously unknown 
on this continent, changes in the conception of 
right relations between students and their teach- 
ers, changes in respect to the place of religious 
worship in academic life ; all these vast changes 
being accompanied by enormous growth in en- 
dowments, in number and range of professor- 
ships, in number of students and the development 
of such various departments as are necessary to 
constitute a true university This transition pe- 
riod was one of great hope, but hope mingled 
with anxiety, perhaps with peril. It was at the 
beginning of this crucial time that Phillips Brooks 
began to impress upon Harvard University in an 
especial and extraordinary degree the stamp of 
his own peerless being. He was every way the 
man for the place and the epoch. He had 
the scholarship, the enthusiasm, the magnetism, 
the breadth, the genius, the energy, the power 
over young men, the intellectual and spiritual 
grasp that were needed. What Harvard is 
to-day is owing in immeasurable measure to 
what Phillips Brooks was to Harvard in those 
formative years. 



APPENDIX. 



[Condensed from a news article in the Boston Daily Advertiser of 
Jan. 7, 1892. Note to this book, page 82.] 

In her report this year Miss Sullivan, Helen Keller's 
teacher, says that three years ago the little girl asked the 
questions, " Where did I come from ? " and " Where shall 
I go when I die ? " Without direct leading, her mind natu- 
rally sought for the cause of things. The explanations 
which this little deaf, dumb and blind girl was then able 
to understand did not satisfy : they only silenced her for 
the time being. 

At last she demanded a name for the power the exist- 
ence of which she had conceived in her mind. Her study 
of natural science had aroused her curiosity as to the 
origin of things, and she began to realize the vastness of 
Nature. 

Although she had often met with the words " God," 
" heaven " and " soul " in the Greek stories which she 
dearly loved, she never asked the meaning of such words 
or made any comment when they occurred. Until Feb- 
ruary, 1889, no one had spoken to her of God. Then a 
dear relative and earnest Christian tried to tell her about 
God ; but, as she was unable to clothe her ideas in words 



IT4 PHILLIPS BROOKS IN BOSTON 

which the child could comprehend, they were received as 
ridiculous by Helen. A few earnest words from Miss 
Sullivan showed Helen that she had been told something 
that she was not yet able to understand, and that it would 
be better for her not to talk about such things until she 
was wiser. 

She had met with the expression " Mother Nature " in 
her reading, and for a long time after this she ascribed to 
her whatever she considered superhuman. She would say, 
" Mother Nature sends the sunshine and the rain to make 
the trees and the grass and the flowers grow." One day 
she said : " I am thinking how very busy dear Mother 
Nature is in the springtime, because she has so many chil- 
dren to take care of. She is the mother of everything, — 
the flowers and trees and winds. She sends the sunshine 
and rain to make the flowers grow. I think the sunshine is 
Nature's warm smile, and the raindrops are her tears." 

In May, 1890, she wrote on her tablet the following : — 

" I wish to write about many things I do not understand. 
Who made the earth and the seas, and everything ? What 
makes the sun hot? Where was I before I came to 
mother ? I know that plants grow from seeds which are 
in the ground, but I am sure people do not grow that 
way. I never saw a child-plant. Little birds and chickens 
come out of eggs. I have seen them. What was the egg- 
before it was an egg ? Why does not the earth fall, it is so 
very large and heavy? Tell me something that Father 
Nature does. May I read the book called the Bible? 
Please tell your little pupil many things when you have 
much time." 



APPENDIX 115 

Miss Sullivan has always assumed that Helen could 
understand whatever it was desirable for her to know. 
She therefore thought it time to teach her the religious 
beliefs held by those with whom she was constantly coming 
in contact. To many questions Miss Sullivan would have 
to answer that there are infinitely many things that the 
wisest people cannot explain. 

No creed or dogma has been taught Helen Keller, but 
Miss Sullivan has sought aid from Bishop Brooks. In a 
letter to Dr. Brooks Helen says : — 

a Why does the great Father in heaven think it is best 
for us to have very great sorrow and pain sometimes ? I 
am always happy, and so was little Lord Fauntleroy ; but 
dear little Jakey's life was full of sadness. And God did 
not put the light in his eyes, and he was blind; and his 
father was not gentle and loving. Do you think Jakey 
loved his Father in heaven more because his other father 
was unkind to him ? How did God tell people that his 
home was in heaven ? When people do very wrong and 
hurt animals and treat children unkindly, God is grieved. 
What will he do to them to teach them to be pitiful and 
loving? Please tell me something that you know about 
God. I like so much to hear about my loving Father who 
is so good and wise." 

Dr. Brooks sent the following reply : — 

"I want to tell you how glad I am that you are so 
happy and enjoy your home so very much. I can almost 
think I see you with your father and mother and little sis- 
ter, with all the brightness of the beautiful country about 



Il6 PHILLIPS BROOKS IN BOSTON 

you; and it makes me very glad to know how glad 
you are. 

"I am glad also to know, from the questions you ask 
me, what you are thinking about. I do not see how we 
can help thinking about God, when he is so good to us all 
the time. Let me tell you how it seems to me that we 
come to know about the heavenly Father. It is from the 
power of love which is in our own hearts. Love is at the 
soul of everything. Whatever has not the power of loving 
must have a very dreary life, indeed. We like to think 
that the sunshine and the winds and the trees are able to 
love in some way of their own, for it would make us know 
that they were happy if we knew that they could love ; and 
so God, who is the greatest and happiest of all beings, is 
the most loving, too. All the love that is in our hearts 
comes from him, as all the light which is in the flower 
comes from the sun; and the more we love, the more near 
we are to God and his love. . . . 

" I told you that I was very happy because of your happi- 
ness. Indeed, I am. So are your father and your mother 
and your teacher and all your friends. But do you not 
think that God is also happy because you are happy ? I 
am sure he is. And he is happier than any of us, because 
he is greater than any of us, and also because he not 
merely sees your happiness as we do, but because he made 
it. He gives it to you as the sun gives light and color to 
the rose; and we are always most glad of what we not 
merely see our friends enjoy, but of what we give them to 
enjoy. Are we not ? 

" But God does not only want us to be happy : he wants 
us to be good. He wants that most of all. He knows 



APPENDIX 



II 7 



that we can be really happy only when we are good. A 
great deal of the trouble that is in the world is medicine 
which is very bad to take, but which it is good to take, 
because it makes us better. We see how good people may 
be in great trouble, when we think of Jesus, who was the 
greatest sufferer that ever lived, and yet was the best 
being, and so, I am sure, the happiest being that the world 
has ever seen. 

" I love to tell you about God ; but he will tell you him- 
self by the love which he will put into your heart if you 
ask him. And Jesus, who is his Son, but is nearer to him 
than all of us, his other children, came into the world on 
purpose to tell us all about our Father's love. If you read 
his words, you will see how full his heart is of the love of 
God. ' We know that he loves us,' Jesus says. And so 
he loved men himself ; and, though they were very cruel to 
him, and at last killed him, he was willing to die for them, 
because he loved them so. And, Helen, he loves men 
still ; and he loves us, and he tells us that we may love him. 

" And so love is everything ; and, if anybody asks you, 
or if you ask yourself, what God is, answer, ' God is love.' 
That is the beautiful answer which the Bible gives. 

" All this is what you are to think of, and to understand 
more and more, as you grow older. Think of it now, and 
let it make every blessing brighter because your dear 
Father sends it to you." 

Later Helen wrote : — 

"It fills my heart with joy to know that God loves me 
so much that he wishes me to live always, and that he 
gives me everything that makes me happy, — loving friends, 



Il8 PHILLIPS BROOKS IN BOSTON 

a precious little sister, sweet flowers, and, best of all, a 
heart that can love and sympathize and a mind that can 
think and enjoy. I am thankful to my heavenly Father for 
giving me all these precious things. But I have many 
questions to ask you, — some things that I cannot under- 
stand, because I am quite ignorant ; but, when I am older, 
I shall not be so much puzzled. 

" What is a spirit ? Did Jesus go to school when he 
was a child ? Teacher cannot find anything about it in the 
Bible. How does God deliver people from evil ? Why do 
the people say that the Jews were very wicked when they 
did not know any better ? Where is heaven ? My teacher 
says it does not matter where it is, so long as we know that 
it is a beautiful place, and that we shall see God there, and 
be happy always. But I should like to know where it is, 
and what it is like. What is conscience ? Once I wished 
very much to read my new book about Heidi, when teacher 
told me to study. Something whispered to me that it 
would be wrong to disobey dear teacher. Was it con- 
science that whispered to me it would be wrong to dis- 
obey?" 

Dr. Brooks replied : — 

"I think it is God's care for us all that makes us care for 
one another. It is because we are in the Father's house 
that we know that all people are our brothers and sisters. 
God is very anxious that we should know that he is our 
Father. We can imagine something of how any father 
must feel whose children do not know that he is their 
father. He must be very anxious to tell them, and so God 
tries in every way to tell us. I think he writes it even 



APPENDIX 



upon the beautiful walls of the great house of Nature 
which we live in that he is our Father, as a child who found 
herself living in a lovely house might guess that he who 
built that house and put her there loved her very dearly. 

" And then, again, God tells us in our hearts that he is 
our Father. That is what we call conscience, — God's 
voice in our hearts. You say that you try to do what is 
right in order to please your teacher, and you ask whether 
that is conscience. But what is it that makes you want to 
please your teacher ? Why do you want to show her that 
you love her ? Why do you love her ? It is God in your 
heart that makes you grateful and makes you want to 
make other people happy. Your heart takes God into it, 
as the flower takes in the sunshine ; and then, when you 
think God's thoughts and do God's actions, it is a sign to 
you that God is in you, and that you belong to him." 



The Insight of Faith. 

Brief Selected Paragraphs from the Writings of 
HENRY W. FOOTE. 



In the present booklet we have something stronger and broader than 
the customary devotional volume : we have the high call to self-reverence 
and self-reliance, and the sight of Possibility. If every tried heart and 
tempted soul might have continuously by him or her this little book — it 
will take up little room lying open on the desk or work-bench, and will 
slip easily into the coat-pocket or work-basket — life would be stronger, 
and fuller of recognized blissful opportunity from the moment of the 
volume's possession and first use. It should be a gift to many a young 
man and young woman, from any one interested in them, as an inspiring 
" companion " till its high incentive becomes a part of the self 'of every 
possessor of it. 

PRESS NOTICES. 

" Rarely does one find a little volume so full of helpful and precious 
words. Devotional in spirit and uplifting in aim." — Christian Inquirer. 

" Felicitously illustrates the eloquence, the gentleness of heart, and 
the sweetness of nature of him whose maxims of life it chronicles." — 
Boston Sunday Gazette. 

"Replete with comfort, devotion, and sincere Christianity." — 
Illustrated Church Weekly. 

"Full of wise, tender, helpful words, and will be a practical aid in 
hours of devotion." — Congregationalist {Boston), 

" Whoever has been helped by the earnestness of Jeremy Taylor or 
the devout pages of Fenelon will find much of the same spirit within the 
narrow limits of this small volume." — Christian Register. 



Price, in Flexible Cloth, 50 cents. 

Morocco, Full Gilt, $1.50. 



For sale by booksellers, or sent, postpaid, on receipt of price. 

Geo. H. Ellis, Publisher, 

141 Franklin Street, Boston. 



^Afterglow. 

By FREDERICK A. HINCKLEY. 

There are few who, reading it, will not be strongly at- 
tracted to this little book. It is written out of life — out of 
the struggling, perplexing, troublous, hopeful, aspiring life 
we all know and dread and delight in. knA grow in. And 
this is how the book is to help us. 



CONTENTS. 



Voices out of the Silence. 

II. They Had All Things Common. 
III. Spiritual Awakening. 

IV. "The Star! the Star!" 



PRESS NOTICES. 

"Full of thought, feeling, and experience." — Boston Times. 

" The entire contents of the little volume are uplifting and full of 
consolation for any who are suffering from a great bereavement." — 
Boston Sunday Gazette. 

" Such sermons reach not only the understanding, but cultivate the 
spirit. In Arnold's phrase, they are 'aiders and abettors of all who 
would live in the spirit.' ' ' — Universalist {Chicago). 

"A book which one would like to keep in stock, to be given to the 
stricken, the troubled, the perplexed, the struggling, and the discour- 
aged." — Christian Register. 

" Four beautiful discourses, born out of the deep places of the 
author's soul, and tending to such places in other souls." — Unity 
{Chicago). 

Cloth, 8 1 Pages. Price, 50 cents. 



For sale by booksellers, or sent, postpaid, on receipt of pr 

Geo. H. Ellis, Publisher, 

141 Franklin Street, Boston. 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper proces 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: March 2006 

PreservationTechnoiogie 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATIO 

1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
(724)779-2111 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




017 523 133 A 



